_EXPLICIT_! I have tried to show cause why we should not bluntly dismiss
the mass of disputed objects as forgeries, but should rest in a balance
of judgment, file the objects for reference, and await the results of
future excavations. If there be a faker, I hope he appreciates my
sympathetic estimate of his knowledge, assiduity, and skill in _leger de
main_.
I am the forger's only friend, and I ask him to come forward and make a
clean breast of it, like the young men who hoaxed the Society for
Psychical Research with a faked wraith, or phantasm of the living.
"Let it fully now suffice,
The gambol has been shown!"
It seems to me nearly equally improbable that a forger has been at work
on a large scale, and that sets of objects, unexampled in our isle, have
really turned up in some numbers. But then the Caithness painted pebbles
were equally without precedent, yet are undisputed. The proverbial fence
seems, in these circumstances, to be the appropriate perch for Science,
in fact a statue of the Muse of Science might represent her as sitting,
in contemplation, on the fence. The strong, the very strong point
against authenticity is this: _numbers_ of the disputed objects were
found in sites of the early _Iron Age_. Now such objects, save for a few
samples, are only known,--and that in non-British lands,--in _Neolithic_
sites. The theory of survival may be thought not to cover the _number_
of the disputed objects.