1862.] GEIKIE ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 219 



a comparatively recent geological period is a fact which has long 

 been familiar to the geologist. A line of raised beach, with shells 

 of living species still in a perfect state of preservation, fringes many 

 parts of the coast, at a height of from 15 or 20 to upwards of 40 

 feet above the present sea-level. This diiference of elevation may 

 point either to different periods of upheaval or to one great upward 

 movement which varied in intensity in different parts of the island. 

 For facts so weU known it is only necessary to refer here to the 

 papers of Mr. Smith of Jordan Hill, Mr. Maclaren, Mr. Chambers, 

 and others who have described the evidence which different parts of 

 the Scottish coast-line furnish as to a recent rise. The object of the 

 present communication is to inquire how far we have data for ascer- 

 taining the time at which at least the later stages of this rise took 

 place. 



Ever since the publication, in 1838, of Mr. Smith's great paper on 

 the last changes of level in the British Islands*, the belief has been 

 universal that no alteration of the relative position of sea and land 

 has taken place within the last t^o thousand years, the coast-line 

 being the same now as it was at the time of the Roman invasion. I 

 shall have occasion, in a subsequent part of this paper, to examine 

 the evidence on which such a belief is founded. With regard to the 

 centuries prior to the Christian era, Mr. Smith remarks that probably 

 no change of level has taken place within the human period f. For 

 this statement, however, he adduces no other foundation than that 

 mounds known as British tumuli, along with vitrified forts, exist 

 close to the margin of the present high-water mark. The discovery 

 of canoes in an elevated part of the old alluvium of the Clyde, and 

 of other antiquities in that of the Forth, tended to throw some doubt 

 on Mr. Smith's assertion. Mr. Chambers, in his volume on * Ancient 

 Sea Margins ' (pp. 18-22), published in 1848, refers with hesitation 

 to the possibility of these canoes having been in use prior to the last 

 shift of the land, and the same view was entertained by other geo- 

 logists ; but in October 1850 he published an account of some anti- 

 quities found in the Carse of Gowrie which he conceived to have been 

 brought by an abnormal inundation within the historical period, 

 and he then acknowledged his belief that those of Glasgow had been 

 similarly imbedded, and that consequently they afforded no evidence 

 in favour of a change of level since Scotland had been tenanted by 

 man J. 



Such was the state of the question when, in the spring of last year 

 (1861), I obtained evidence which seemed to show that a portion of 

 the coast of the Firth of Forth had been elevated not only within 

 the human period, but even since the first years of the Roman 

 occupation §. This observation involved so wide a departure from 



* Edin. New Phil. Journ. xxv. p. 385 ; and Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. viii. part i. 

 t Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. viii. p. 58. 

 + See Edin. New Phil. Journ. vol. xHx. p. 233. 



§ Edin. New Phil. Journ., new series, vol. xiv. p. 107. Since this paper 

 was written, more recent excavations have shown the existence of mediasval 



