4 o2 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



the character and extent of which demand the former flow of a 

 much greater body of water than now circulates in the Forth 

 and its tributaries. In short, these gravels and sands have the 

 same appearance as those of the Earn and the Tay, and seem to 

 me to point to the same conditions. The valleys were then 

 liable to be greatly flooded, owing to the more or less sudden 

 melting of the snow in the higher districts. In spring and 

 autumn volumes of muddy water descended to the estuary, 

 bearing with them ever and anon whole rafts of uprooted trees, 

 which, getting water-logged, would sink to the bottom, or now 

 and again run aground upon mud-banks and shoals, where in 

 time they would become entombed in the gradually accumu- 

 lating sediment. At this period Neolithic man inhabited Scot- 

 land, living along the shores of the broad estuary, where he 

 subsisted to a large extent upon shell-fish. Occasionally he 

 succeeded in capturing the whale, skeletons of which have been 

 found along the margin of the ancient Forth associated with 

 primitive implements of stone and horn. The remains of man 

 himself, however, have rarely been met with in the Carse-clays. 

 In the year 1843, while some alterations were being made upon 

 the canal at Grangemouth, a human skull (dolichocephalic) was 

 discovered at a depth of 21 feet below the surface. But so 

 far as I know this is quite exceptional. Probably the old whale- 

 hunters and shell -gatherers were good weather-prophets, and 

 never trusted themselves far from land when there was any 

 prospect of a storm. Most of the canoes which have been found 

 may have been drifted from their moorings, or if they capsized 

 with their owners on board, the land was probably near enough 

 to be reached by swimming. 



Eventually the sea, which had attained to a height above its 

 present level of about 50 feet, began again to retire, until 

 ere long it had receded to a vertical distance of 25 or 30 feet, 

 and thus left exposed a broad expanse of low -lying alluvial 

 grounds in the upper reaches of the estuary. We have no 

 means of measuring the time required for this change, but it 

 probably implies the lapse of many centuries. At all events 



