236 Mr Richard Adie on the Causes which Influence 



vessel or boat to this place, favoured in doing so by the natural 

 hollow of the rill formerly adverted to. The beating of the inunda- 

 tion on the skirts of Inchmichael might produce that bedding of 

 gravel in which the relic was subsequently found. As the same 

 ^wasi- valley passes through the neighbouring estate of Megginch, it 

 seems far from unlikely, that the anchor found in a low situation 

 there may have belonged to the same vessel with the boat-hook. 

 All this is of course purely hypothetical ; but our purpose, it must 

 be remembered, is only to discover a manner in which the loss and 

 deposition of these articles might have occurred, since the present 

 relative arrangements of sea and land were assumed. 



On a former occasion, I enumerated a series of similar discoveries 

 in the low sea-bordering lands of Scotland. The remains of a boat, 

 and several nautical implements, particularly an anchor, are recorded 

 to have been found in the Cat*se of Falkirk, several miles from the 

 sea. In the Carse of Stirling, as is well known, the skeletons of 

 two whales have been discovered in recent times, in each case accom- 

 panied by an implement of bone, denoting that the animals had been 

 embedded there since the country was inhabited by man. In the 

 similar plain on which part of Glasgow is built, four or five ancient 

 canoes have been discovered; and, in one case, a flint weapon 

 was found within the boat. Considering that the ground at Glas- 

 gow was 25 feet above the sea, while the utmost ascertained height of 

 modern inundations in the Clyde is 21 feet, I leant, though not 

 without due hesitation, to the hypothesis, that a change in the rela- 

 tive level of sea and land was required to account for these pheno- 

 mena. I must now acknowledge, that the archaeological considera- 

 tions regarding .the Inchmichael boat-hook, and those connected with 

 ancient inundations and abnormal tides, dispose me to regard the 

 whole phenomena as of a purely historical character. 



On the Causes which Influence the Changes of Isothermal 

 Lines. By Mr Richard Adie. Communicated by the 

 Author. 



In the following communication, I mean to endeavour to shew, 

 that the high temperature enjoyed by European countries, when 

 compared with others in the northern hemisphere of the same lati- 

 tude, can be better accounted for when the cause of the elevated 

 temperature is referred to heat generated in the great desert of North 

 Africa, than when, as is more generally done, it is attributed to the 

 influence of the gulf stream. 



For isothermal lines, or lines traced through places on the earth's 

 surface, having the same mean annual temperature, we are indebted, 



