396 Sir William Turner [Marcb 26, 



was tnr. cated at one end, and shaped so that it could have been used 

 as a hammer, whilst the opposite end was smooth and bevelled to a 

 chisel or axe- shaped edge formed by the hard external part of the 

 antler.* There can be no doubt that this implement resembled those 

 found alongside of the Airthrey and Blair Prummond whales earlier 

 in the century, and it effectually disposes of the statement that they 

 were lances or harpoons. Dug-out canoes have indeed been found 

 imbedded in the Carse clays at a similar level, so that the people of 

 that day had discovered a means of chasing the whale in the water ; 

 one can, however, scarcely conceive it possible to manufacture a horn 

 implement sufficient to penetrate the tough skin and blubber of one 

 of these huge animals, and to hold it in its efforts to escape. It is 

 much more probable that the whale had been stranded at the ebb of 

 the tide in the shallower water near the shore, and that the people 

 had descended from the neighbouring heights, and had used their 

 horn implements, with their chisel-like edges, to flense the carcass of 

 its load of flesh and blubber, and had carried the spoil to their 

 respective habitations. There can be little doubt that these imple- 

 ments rank, along with the dug-out canoes, as the oldest relics made 

 with human hands which have up to this time been found in Scotland, 

 and that they belong to the earliest period of occupation by Neolithic 

 man. 



After the oscillations in the relative level of land and sea had 

 ceased, and the beach found at the present day had been formed, 

 evidence of the presence of Neolithic man and of mammals, both wild 

 and domesticated, such as now exist in Scotland, becomes greatly 

 multiplied. 



Shallow caves or rock shelters situated in the cliff which bounds 

 the esplanade at Oban Bay, which, after being closed for centuries 

 by a landslide from the adjacent height, had recently been quarried 

 into in obtaining stone for building purposes, were described in the 

 lecture.f The caves were as a rule 100 yards inland, and about 

 30 feet or more above the present high- water mark. They had, no 

 doubt, been formed by the action of the waves at the period of forma- 

 tion of the 25-30 foot beach, for the floor of one of the caves was 

 covered by a layer of gravel and pebbles, which had been washed 

 there when the sea had had access to it. 



In these caves, bones representing fifteen human skeletons, men, 

 women, and children, were found ; also bones of the Bos longifrons, 

 red and roe deer, pig, dog, goat, badger, and otter, shells of edible 

 molluscs, bones of fish and claws of crabs ; flint scrapers, hammer 

 stones, implements of bone and horn fashioned into the form of pins, 

 borers and chisel-shaped instruments. In one cave several harpoons 



* I described this implement in Reports of British Association, 1889, p. 790. 

 It has subsequently been figured in a Report by Dr. Munro in the ' Proceedings 

 of the Society of Antiquaries/ 1896. 



t For a detailed description, see papers by Dr. Joseph Anderson and the 

 Author in Proc. Scot. Soc. Antiquaries, 1895. 



