4 SPECIMEXS OF CETACEA. 



above the level of high water. The skull appeared to be in the same 

 bed as that in which the bones were found in 1863, and the bed 

 belonged to his group of forty-feet Beach Beds, in which layers of peat 

 occur, and numerous organic remains, including those of horses and 

 whales, have been found {Trans. Geol. Soc. Glasgoic, vol. x., 1896). 



In 1823 Sir G. S. Mackenzie of Coul communicated to the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh {Transactions, vol. x.) an account of the 

 vertebra of a whale exposed in a bed of bluish clay near Dingwall, 

 in Ross-shire, in a raised beach about three miles from the sea 

 •and about 12 feet above high-water mark. No attempt apparently 

 was made to discriminate the species of Avhale to which the vertebra 

 belonged. 



The part of Scotland which has given the most abundant evidence 

 of the presence of skeletons of whales in raised sea-beaches is the 

 valley of the Forth, more especially in the precincts of Stirling. 

 The recorded examples have been summarised from time to time by 

 the Rev. Charles Rogers in his guide-book to the Bridge of Allan, by 

 Mr David Milne Home in his Ancient Water-Lines in Scothmd 

 (1882), and recently and more fully by Mr David B. Morris, in The 

 Raised Beaches of the Forth Valley (1892, reprinted 1901). Mr Morris 

 has collected not fewer than fourteen records of bones of whales 

 exposed in the fifty-feet raised beach bordering the river Forth and 

 the upper end of the Estuary. They were imbedded in the Carse blue 

 clay subjacent to the soil now worked in agriculture, and were met 

 Avith either in making roads or drains, or in digging the clay for the 

 manufacture of bricks. The clay frequently cuntains shells of various 

 species of molluscs, foraminifera, etc., now inhabiting the adjoining 

 sea, and the w^hales' bones usually occur from 20 to 30 feet above the 

 present high-water level. 



The earliest and most complete discovery was at Airthrey, near 

 Stirling, in July 1819, of the skeleton of a whale, the length of 

 which was roughly estimated at about 72 feet. The bones were 

 lying in blue silt at a depth of between 4 and 5 feet from the 

 surface of the ground, and 24 feet above high-water level of the 

 river Forth. An account of the discovery was given in the Edin- 

 huryh Philosophical Journal, vol. i., by Mr Robert Bald. In a 

 letter in my possession, written on 20th August 1819 by Mr Bald 

 to the Rev. Dr Baird, the Principal of the University, it is stated 

 that on the previous day the bones were dispatched by steamer 

 to be deposited in the University as most interesting specimens of 

 natural history. The letter contained an inventory of the bones, 

 as follows : head bone, jaw bones, forty vertebrae, thirteen ribs, one 

 shoulder-blade, swimming paws, various broken bones, an ear bone, 

 deer horns, one of which was stated in Mr Bald's paper in the 

 Philosophical Journal to have been perforated. The bones were 

 placed in the Natural History Museum, then under the charge of 

 Professor Tit. Jameson, which was transferred in 1856 to the Science 

 and Art Deparment, and formed the nucleus of the Natural History 

 Collection in the Museum, now knoAvn as the Royal Scottish Museum. 



