236 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society, 



and we have both the occasion for the use of the canoes and 

 the element on which they floated. Any sudden flood 

 swamping them is sufficient to account for their being em- 

 bedded in the mud and gravel which formed the bed of that 

 ancient estuary. 



Wilson, the author of '^ Pre-historic Annals," gives us (pp. 

 27 and 40) a graphic account of what may be supposed to have 

 been the early appearance of the country in those parts of 

 Scotland, and the character of its first inhabitants. 



That the great geological changes of the level of the sea 

 are carried back into an antiquity very much greater than 

 the period to which authentic history reaches, is very suffi- 

 ciently proved by the oldest civilised remains of which our 

 country can boast ; I mean those of the Eomans. These are 

 rather numerous in the neighbourhood of Glasgow. There 

 is a Eoman camp at Camphill, near Langside ; a prsetorium 

 or station of a praetor at Oakshaw Head, near Paisley; a 

 Eoman bridge at Duntocher; and the site of the last fort 

 upon the Eoman Wall of Antoninus, or Graham's Dyke as it 

 is commonly called. This site is now occupied by the ruins 

 of a modern fort called Dungiass Castle. 



What I desire to particularly call attention to is, that, 

 " when both walls were built, they were erected with refer- 

 ence to a sea-level at either end corresponding very nearly if 

 not entirely with that at present existing in both the Scotch 

 and English estuaries." 



If Dungiass was the site of the terminating fort on the west 

 coast, its situation almost on the level of the present surface 

 of the water affords a proof that the level of the sea is not 

 lower now than it was in the year 140, or 1738 years ago. 



If then two thousand years has seen such a slow rise as 

 merely to convert a swamp into dry ground, without almost 

 raising it at all, except where that is done through artificial 

 means adopted by man, how shall we calculate the epochs 

 necessary for the formation of the numerous beaches found 

 at so many different heights from the present sea-level up to 

 360 feet ? But even this is not all. There are terraces 

 covered by the sea. And this introduces us to a new 

 element in the computation, namely, that the movements 



