Reports and Proceedings. 181 
Dickinson, Mr. Plant, and other gentlemen, expressed similar views. 
_—Manchester Guardian. 
EpinsurGH GroitocicaL Society.—I. Of Mr. Tuomas Smytn’s 
paper On the Upheaval of the Shores of the Firth of Forth during 
the Human Period, with a notice of the recent discovery of flint 
weapons at Marionville (between Edinburgh and Portobello), read 
December 22nd, and reported in abstract in the GEOLOGICAL MAGA- 
ZINE, No. VIII. p. 76, another short abstract (by the author) is here 
offered, as the former is considered by him very inaccurate. Mr. 
T. Smytu writes— 
‘I stated, in the first place, that, as I had traced Oyster-shells, for 
a distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore, to a height of 
about 43 feet above the level of the sea, and as those shells lie beneath 
a stratified deposit of sand and gravel,—and further, as I had traced © 
the same stratum, though devoid of shells, to a height of 100 feet,— 
I concluded (having taken many other facts into consideration) that 
there had been an upheaval of the land to the extent of at least 100 
feet since the latter portion of the Post-Pliocene era. I then, in the 
second plaee, mentioned the known upheaval of at least 25 feet since 
the time of the Roman occupation ; and I cited the evidence of old 
men who are still alive, to show that within the last forty years there 
had been not only a gain of land amounting to 66 feet, but that 
ordinary high tides forty years ago reached a point on the land 
which is now elevated 2 feet and 1 inch above the present cor- 
responding tides. I further showed that the foregoing evidence 
was fully corroborated by the old maps of the district. By a series 
of measurements, I proved that in the eighty-three years between 
1770 and 1853, when the Ordnance Survey was made, there had 
been a gain of land amounting to 96 feet, and an actual change of 
level amounting to 44 feet. I stated that, although there had been 
a considerable setting-up of mud and sand in many parts of the 
coast, yet here there could have been none, as there had been a 
marked change of level. I concluded, therefore, that the shores of 
the Firth of Forth were at present rising at the rate of 5 feet a 
century. I mentioned also, that as flint weapons had been discovered 
at Marionville sand-pit at a point about 90 feet above the level of 
the sea, and a mile distant from it, and as two of those weapons had 
been disembedded with my own hands from the marine stratum that 
I had traced to a height of 100 feet above the sea-level, I considered 
that there had been an upheaval of at least 90 feet since man first 
inhabited the shores of the Firth of Forth.’ Mr. Smyth adds—‘Ad- 
ditional evidence, which I intend soon to lay before our Society, fully 
corroborates the facts I have adduced regarding the present rate of 
upheaval, and shows, beyond a doubt, that the whole southern shore 
of the Firth of Forth between Queensferry and North Berwick, a 
distance of 28 miles, and that portion of the east coast which lies 
between North Berwick and St. Abb’s Head, about 24 miles additional, 
have been upheaved more than 2} feet within the last fifty years.’ 
Il. February 2nd.—Mr. James Haswett, M.A., read a paper 
