INTRODUCTION. 9 



not fused with the bodies, and some ribs were brought into view. 

 They were about 100 yards from the river Forth, which bounded one 

 side of the field, and they were estimated to be about 30 feet above 

 high-water leveh I visited the place when the excavations were in 

 progress ; the vertebrae were not in serial order, but were lying 

 irregularly in the clay, turned over on their sides, and the skull was 

 at the west of the spine. The bones were removed to the lawn at 

 the mansion-house, where I again saw them and counted two dorsal, 

 seven lumbar and one cervical vertebrae, the pair of 1st ribs, a part 

 of another rib, and the hinder part of the skull. The right side of 

 the occipital bone was injured, but the left side and the condyls 

 were present ; the basi-occipital was jointed but not fused with 

 the post-sphenoid, with which the base of the vomer was articu- 

 lated ; parts of the temporal bones were present, and on one side 

 the periotic was in situ. I measured the largest, most perfect 

 lumbar vertebra, 26 inches from the ventral surface to the tip of 

 the spine and 30 inches between the transverse processes; the l:)ody 

 was 10;| inches in dorsi - ventral and 12^ inches in transverse 

 diameter. The left 1st rib was almost entire, but the right one was 

 broken. The body of a cervical, that of a lumbar, and the tympanic 

 bones are described on p. 69 of the Catalogue of the Anatomical 

 Museum. 



The bones were retained for a time at Meiklewood, and were sub- 

 sequently presented by Mrs Dalrymple to the Smith Institute. The 

 collection consists of the occipi to-temporal region of the skull ; the 1st 

 dorsal vertebra, 23^ inches between tips of transverse processes, with 

 the body 7^ inches transversely and oh inches dorsi-ventrally ; a 1st 

 left rib 56 inches long on the arc and 23i inches in the chord, some 

 broken vertebrae, and plates and portions of ribs. An atlas vertebra, 

 the anterior articular surface of which measures 14 by 7f inches, may 

 also belong to this animal. 



The implement of deer's horn lying beside the skull was obviously 

 similar to those found along with the skeleton of the Aiithrey 

 Whale and with that subsequently exposed at Blair Drummond. It 

 was at one time customary to call them harpoons or lances, but 

 their shape, without a point, and the position of a hole for a handle 

 in the middle and not at one end of the implement, unfit them 

 for the purpose of a harpoon or lance. The chisel-shaped end, 

 again, adapts them for dividing the blubber, and it is probable 

 that the neolithic people descended from the adjoining heights 

 and used them to remove the blubber from the carcase of the 

 stranded whale (figure, p. 70). 



In the Smith Institute is a scapula, which unfortunatel}' bears 

 no mark of localit}^, though there can be no doubt, from its appear- 

 ance, that it was from the Carse clay. Possibly it may have been in 

 the Macfarlane Collection already referred to. Its diameters Avere : 

 between anterior and posterior angles, 34| inches ; glenoido-vertebral, 

 33i inches. The vertebral border was convex and thick ; both the 

 coracoid and acromion processes were absent. The scapula therefore 



