Edinburgh journal of science (1831) Edinburgh journal of science edinburghjournal05edin Year: 1831 290 Dr Ilibbert's Observations on Vitrified Fo?is. fusion of the stony materials has ever taken place. These cir- cumstances, then, are fatal to the notion that vitrification was the effect of design ; they rather show that it was merely in- cidental to some other view, which the authors of it must have contemplated. This theory is again as ill supported in its details. Mr Wil- liams has supposed that the builders of these forts raised two mounds parallel to, or in the direction of their intende
Edinburgh journal of science (1831) Edinburgh journal of science edinburghjournal05edin Year: 1831 290 Dr Ilibbert's Observations on Vitrified Fo?is. fusion of the stony materials has ever taken place. These cir- cumstances, then, are fatal to the notion that vitrification was the effect of design ; they rather show that it was merely in- cidental to some other view, which the authors of it must have contemplated. This theory is again as ill supported in its details. Mr Wil- liams has supposed that the builders of these forts raised two mounds parallel to, or in the direction of their intended wall, and that they filled the ground formed by these parallel mounds with fuel, above which they laid the materials intended to be vitrified. Now this supposition is faulty, inasmuch as it proceeds upon an incorrect view which has been taken of the actual con- struction of these forts. A wall formed in such a manner would present to view a pile of stony materials, with sides which would be vertical, or at least nearly so ; and it would inclose the summit of a hill after the manner of a modern park wall. But this is not the character of a vitrified fort. The structure of the least dilapidated example is much more rude, being rather after the model of a filled up or extinct volcanic crater. Upon the summit of an insulated hill, an incredible accumulation of loose stones has been made to rise to the greatest height around its circumference, and to gradually thin off towards the centre of the enclosed site. An ori- ginal form of this kind could not then have been derived from any parallel mounds. This is evident from the an- nexed imaginary section. These are the chief reasons which induce me to regard the theory of Williams as perfectly utenable. 3dly, The theory of Dr Anderson, that vitrification was pro- moted by the employment of a peculiar vitrescible ore. The theory of Williams, during the same year in which it was divulged, met with some qualified support from Dr An- ders
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