3. The conclusion is forced upon us by these facts that the entire 

 area was at a remote time covered by an estuary, connected with the 

 sea by a narrow strait near Erskine, where the hills on either side 

 press close upon the stream ; whose limits reached inland almost as 

 far as Johnstone and Paisley, narrowed upward by the projecting 

 Ibrox and Pollokshields ridges, but again widening out, so as to 

 wash the base of the Cathkin and Cathcart Hills, and sweeping round 

 north-east in a wide bay, so as to cover the space now occupied by the 

 Glasgow Green and suburbs of Bridgeton. The river then entered 

 about Bothwell or Butherglen ; and the northern shore was formed 

 by the lower slopes of the hills already alluded to, and their contin- 

 uations north-west by Partick, Jordanhill, and Yoker to the vici- 

 nity of Erskine. At even higher levels within the city Mr. Robert 

 Chambers has traced well-marked terraces, which he considers the 

 beaches of a former sea ; and as far up as near the summit level of 

 Sauchiehall Street, about 25 paces west of the Wellington Arcade, 

 a marine deposit with shells was discovered in 1850, and described 

 by Mr. William Ferguson.* The beds were, sand 2 feet; peat 

 1 foot, and sand again not passed through ; whole depth, 9 feet. 

 In the inferior sand bed there were marine shells, but specimens of 

 troclius ziziphinus only were preserved. The height above high 

 water is here 94 feet 8 inches, and is the greatest at which recent 

 marine deposits are known to exist within the city. Whether this 

 bed is a remnant of the extensive estuary deposit above noticed it is 

 impossible to say, nor is it of much importance to inquire, as recent 

 shelly deposits exist in the basin of the Clyde at like and even much 

 greater elevations, in situations which we cannot suppose to have 

 been continuously occupied by the estuary in question, and whose 

 origin is certainly very different, far removed from the human period 

 to which the canoe beds are referable. Even this era the " stone 

 period" of Scottish archaeologists lies far back in pre-historic time 

 how far we have no means of knowing. Nearly 2,000 years ago 

 the Roman wall was constructed between the Forth and Clyde 

 from Bowling to Grangemouth ; and, as Mr. Smith of Jordanhill 

 has happily pointed out, no oscillation in level has taken place since 

 that time. This singular work had precise reference even to the 

 present tide levels. How remote, then, must be the time when the 

 quiet waters of the estuary laved the hill sides, now covered by busy 

 thoroughfares ; and a race whose other memorials are lost navigated 

 in these rude canoes the broader waters of the river, whose narrowed 



* Transactions of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, vol. iii., p. 147. 



