Sea Terraces. 549 



terrace runs with persistence for a number of miles. 

 Eound the Firth of Forth, for example, on both shores, 

 there is an old sea cliff of solid rock, overlooking a 

 raised beach or terrace, now often cultivated, and then 

 we come to the present sea beach. This terrace usually 

 consists of gravel and sea-shells, of the same species 

 with those that lie upon the present beach, where the 

 tide rises and falls. The same kind of terrace is found 

 on the shores of the Firth of Clyde, and round the Isle 

 of Arran, and in almost all the other estuaries of Scot- 

 land, and in places round the coast of the West High- 

 lands. Old sea caverns are common in these elevated 

 cliffs, made at a time when they were daily washed by 

 the waves. Similar or analogous raised beaches occur 

 on the borders of Wales, and in the south of England. 

 In Devon and Cornwall there are the remains of old 

 consolidated beaches clinging to the cliffs from twenty 

 to thirty feet above the level of the sea. It is clear, 

 therefore, that an elevation of the land has occurred in 

 places to the extent of about forty feet, at a very re- 

 cent period, long after all the living species of shell- 

 fish inhabited our shores. In Scotland other old sea 

 terraces occur at heights of a hundred feet and more. 



Further, in the alluvial plains that border the Forth, 

 and on the Clyde in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, at 

 various times, in cutting trenches, canals, and other 

 works, the bones of whales, seals, and porpoises, have 

 been found, at a height of from twenty to thirty feet 

 above the level of high-water mark. Now it is evident 

 that whales did not crawl twenty or thirty feet above 

 high-water mark to die, and therefore they must either 

 have died upon the spot where their skeletons were 

 found or been floated there after death. That part of 

 the country, therefore, must have been covered with 



