17 JUNE 1922, Page 23

The Newton Stone and Other Pictish Inscriptions. By Francis C.

Diack. (Paisley : Gardner.)—This scholarly little pamphlet may be commended to British antiquaries, Mr. Diack solves the old puzzle of the Newton Stone at Insch, .Aberdeenshire, by assuming, reasonably enough, that the Picts spoke an early form of Gaelic, and by applying modern philological methods to the inscription, which is partly in debased Roman letters and partly in Ogams. It seems odd that hieroglyphic and cuneiform, thousands of years older than the Newton Stone, can be read with ease and certainty, while many archaeologists have failed to make any sense of an inscription in our own island dating no earlier than the year 400. But their methods were at fault.