6 Hull— Raised Beach of Cantyre. 



siders the beach to be more ancient than the Eoman period, and 

 Mr. Geikie, on the contrary, more recent, both appealing to the 

 position of the Eoman Wall at its termination on the western and 

 eastern coasts as evidence of the correctness of their views. Who 

 shall decide when such authorities differ ? Perhaps, after all, it is 

 an advantage to science that the point should not be decided ex 

 cathedra — and I cannot but feel something of the satisfaction ex- 

 pressed on a former occasion by the Professor of Geology in one of 

 our Universities, when referring to the controversy regarding the 

 age of certain fresh-water strata in his neighbourhood — that there 

 v/as a probability of a question being left which would afford matter 

 for speculation to all future generations of students in geology. 



Professor Nicol, in his description of the Geology of Cantyre,^ — 

 to the accuracy of which I can bear a willing testimony — gives a 

 brief description of this old coast line ; which from the level of its 

 inner limit above high- water mark, may be called " the thirty -feet 

 beach." All along the coast the ancient sea-margin may be traced 

 by a line of cliffs of various degrees of steepness, according to the 

 nature of the rock ; sometimes as a bank umbrageous with trees and 

 shrubs ; sometimes as a rocky cliff projecting to the water's edge, and 

 again receding inland for several hundred yards. In many places 

 this old coast-cliff is hollowed into caverns of all sizes and forms ; 

 and these caverns have been hewn not only in the softer beds of the 

 Old Eed Sandstone and Conglomerate, or even in the Mica-schist, but 

 in such hard rocks as the porphyries of Davar Island, at the entrance 

 to Campbelton Bay. 



From the base of this cliff a slightly shelving terrace extends to 

 the present sea-margin, on which are built most of the villages, as 

 well as some of the ruined churches and graveyards, which probably 

 date as far back as the 12th or 13th century. The terrace has also 

 been taken advantage of vsdth considerable judgment for laying out 

 the roads which skirt the shore ; and I venture to think no traveller 

 can come away from that wild country without complimenting the 

 inhabitants on the excellency of their roads, over which, on the 

 darkest nights, a carriage may be driven at a rapid pace with the 

 greatest safety ; and, as an additional recommendation, I may add, 

 that there are no turnpikes. 



The surface of the terrace is often diversified by rocks, sometimes 

 rising in isolated and fantastic masses above the level surface of the 

 terrace, and resembling in form and features those at a lower level 

 which are now subject to the full play of the breakers. So little 

 altered, indeed, are these inland rocks from the skerries and sea- 

 stacks of the coast in the immediate vicinity that, as Mr. Geikie 

 observes, were you to strip them of their garniture of lichens and 

 mosses, and tear away the shrubs and brambles which cling to their 

 sides or spring from their tops, and in their place clothe them with 

 a slaggy covering of sea-weed, limpets, and Balani, you might 

 suppose they had only yesterday been lifted out of the waters of 

 the sea. 



^ Jouru. Geol. Soc, yoI. Yiii. 



