1 28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



Forth. Skeletons of whales have also been found at Blair Drum- 

 mond, and at various other places, generally twenty feet above the 

 reach of the tide. At Blair Drummond and at Airthrey, lying 

 beside the skeletons, were found rude spears of deer's horn, 

 broken, and with a round hole through them, as if they had been 

 used by the natives in their battles with the monsters of the 

 deep, and had been broken in the encounter. This is the first 

 evidence of the presence of man in this country. 



Mr Geikie is of opinion that at least a great part of the old 

 beaches have been raised within the Roman period of our island, 

 and perhaps he is right; but that the upper reaches of the Forth, 

 and this old beach at Irvine, had finally emerged from the water 

 long before the Roman period began, hardly admits of doubt. If 

 the sea has been steadily retiring at its present pace, we must 

 allow a period of some 4000 years to have elapsed since the waves 

 washed this part of the old Irvine coast. This would still bring 

 us within the human, but far past the Roman period, and it is 

 very improbable, to say the least of it, that the natives would 

 have employed such rude instruments as the horns of a deer at a 

 time when the Caledonians, as we are credibly informed, were 

 already in their iron age. 



The beds at Irvine seem to indicate that the climate has been 

 gradually changing from the intense cold of an Arctic region to 

 the mild summers and winters we now experience. In the first 

 peat deposits Avhich overlies the glacial clays are found the 

 remains of a sparse vegetation, such as one might expect to meet 

 with in the north of Russia, telling of long winters and short 

 summers. The presence of the large Greenland whale on our 

 shores, and the remains of those cetaceans we find in the beds 

 above the peat, together with species of shells now extinct on our 

 shores, but still met with in the Arctic regions, point to a climate 

 much colder than we now have. In the Highlands, and other 

 parts of the country, during the younger days of our fathers, the 

 snow used to be level with the eaves of the house-tops; and then 

 in spring all the ploughing had to be done early in the morning 

 and late in the evening from the intense heat. It is remarkable, 

 too, that the lapwing, which used to migrate before the winter 

 set in, has, for some years, resided with us all the year round. 

 This change in our climate is still further corroborated by meteo- 

 rological observations made lately in sixty different parts of 



