190 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT, [Jail. 11, 



Montrose basin it seems to be less, or about 15 feet according to my 

 observation, although I was unable to make a proper survey. But 

 at the estuary of the Ythan in Aberdeenshire, where I have been 

 able to make a leisurely examination and take measurements care- 

 fully, it does not exceed 8 feet above the hmit of spring-tides ; and at 

 Aberdeen the elevation seems also to have been very little, only a 

 few feet above high-water mark. In passing along the coast, there- 

 fore, from the Firth of Forth to Aberdeen the elevation is clearly 

 less towards the latter point. A similar inference may be derived 

 from an examination of the coast line generally. IS^ear Edinburgh, 

 as, for example, at the Craigentinny meadows, the raised beach may 

 be distinctly seen, and has been well described by Charles Maclaren, 

 Hugh Miller, and others, its height corresponding with the level of 

 the Carse of the Forth. At St. Andrews in Fife, Mr. R. Walker* 

 informs us that a mass of sandstone above high-water mark is 

 riddled with Pholas-burrows. Between Dundee and Arbroath the 

 old coast-line is very striking, at an elevation corresponding with 

 the Carse of the Tay. Nowhere, however, from Stonehaven to Banff 

 do we find evidence of a rise to the same extent, although at many 

 points we can perceive that there has been an upheaval of a few feet. 

 The amount of elevation has therefore been unequal, and conse- 

 quently it is the land that has risen, and not the sea that has sunk. 



b. First traces of Man in Scotland. — It is in these raised estuarine 

 beds that the first traces of man have been found in Scotland. In 

 his notice of the bones of a whale got in the Carse of the Forth at 

 Blair Drummond, Mr. H. H. Drummond says, " It is a very sin- 

 gular circumstance that along with these bones there should have 

 been found a fragment of a stag's horn, similar to that found along 

 with the Airthrey whale, and having a similar round hole bored 

 through iff. This horn was sent, together with the bones, to the 

 Museum of Edinburgh University. Several canoes of a primitive 

 pattern, one of them containing a stone celt, have been found from 

 time to time in the silt of the Clyde at Glasgow. Some of these 

 were noticed by Mr. Robert Chambers, in his book on ' Ancient Sea- 

 Margins,' in 1848, and more recently a very complete account of 

 them has been drawn up by Mr. John Buchanan J. The silt in 

 which these canoes have occurred (more especially the one got in 

 digging the foundations of St. Enoch's Church) is probably the 

 equivalent of the Carse-clay of the Tay and Forth. Instances, indeed, 

 are known of canoes having been found in the Carse of the Forth 

 itself; but the circumstances of their occurrence have not been so 

 well recorded. 



The fact of some of the eminences that project through the- Carse- 

 clay bearing the Celtic appellation Inch, or Innis, meaning an 

 island, favours the opinion that these lands were under water during 

 the time when that race had possession of the country, as Mr. 



* Annals and Mag. Nat. Hist., 3rd ser. vol. xiv. p. 206, 1864. 

 + Memoirs of Wernerian Society, vol. v. p. 400 (1824). 



t See Smith's ' Newer Pliocene Geology,' p. 160, and ' Glasgow, Past and 

 Present,' also ' Report Brit. Assoc' 1855, Trans. Sects, p. 80. 



