1897.] on Early Man in Scotland. 395 



silt and clay which formed the bed of the estuary.* This carse clay, 

 as it is called, is now in places from ,45 to 50 feet above the present 

 high-water mark, and is extensively used for the manufacture of 

 bricks and tiles. At a still lower level lies the carse clay uf the 

 25-30 foot terrace. Until the beginning of the present century the 

 clay had been covered by an extensive peat moss, which the pro- 

 prietors of the land have removed. The question which has now to 

 be considered is — Did man exist in Scotland at the period of the 

 formation of the carse clays and of the two lower sea beaches ? There 

 is undoubted evidence that he did. 



Along the margin of the 45-50 foot terrace in the neighbourhood 

 of Falkirk one comes upon the shell-mounds and kitchen-middens of 

 Neolithic man. All these occur on or at the base of the bluffs which 

 overlook the carse lands — or, in other words, upon the old sea-coast. 

 Again, in the Carse of Gowrie, a dug-out canoe was seen at the very 

 base of the deposits, and immediately above the buried forest-bed of 

 the Tay Valley. The 25-30 foot beach has been excavated out of 

 the 40-50 foot terrace ; it is largely a plain of erosion rather than of 

 accumulation. It is probable, therefore, that many of the relics of 

 man and his congeners which have been obtained at certain depths in 

 the 25-30 foot beach may really belong to the period of the 40-50 foot 

 beach. Some of these finds will now be referred to. 



In 1819 the bones of a great whale, estimated at about 72 feet 

 long, were exposed in the carse land adjoining the gate leading into 

 the grounds of Airthrey Cfstle, near Bridge of Allan, about 25 feet 

 above the level of high water of spring tides. Two pieces of stag's 

 horn, through one of which a hole about an inch in diameter had been 

 bored, were found close to the skeleton. In 1824, on the estate of 

 Blair Drummond, in the district of Menteith, a whale's skeleton was 

 exposed, and along with it a fragment of a stag's horn which was said 

 to have a hole in it and to have been like that found along with the 

 Airthrey whale. Mr. Home Drummond also states that a small piece 

 of wood was present in the hole, which fitted it, but on drying, shrunk 

 considerably. Unfortunately, these specimens have been lost, and no 

 drawings or more detailed descriptions were ever apparently published, 

 though in some geological and archeological works they have been 

 stated, without any authority, to have been lances or harpoons. 

 Twenty years ago the skeleton of another whale was exposed at 

 Meiklewood, Gargunnock, a few miles to the west of Stirling, and 

 resting upon the front of its skull was a portion of the beam of the 

 antler of a red deer, fashioned into an implement eleven inches long, 

 and six and a half inches in greatest girth ; a hole had been bored 

 through the beam, in which was a piece of wood one inch and three- 

 quarters long, apparently the remains of a handle. The implement 



* See more particularly Mr. Milne Home's ' Ancient Water Lines,' Edinburgh, 

 1882, and ' The Raised Beaches of the Forth Valley ' by D. B. Morris, Stirling, 

 1892. 



