224 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Mar. 19, 



advancement from a state of comparative barbarism to a kind of 

 semi-civilization. 



It is plain that the islanders who built this primitive fleet were 

 not only acquainted with the use of metal, but that before they 

 could have cut out the more highly finished canoes they must have 

 been long familiar with its use. They must have had serviceable metal 

 tools wherewith they could saw an oak through cleanly and sharply 

 at its thickest part, make thin oaken boards and planks, and plane 

 down a large tree into a smoothly cut and polished canoe. They had 

 advanced, too, to a high degree of mechanical ingenuity. We are 

 told, for instance, by the antiquary whose account of the discovery of 

 these canoes has been cited, that one of them had its open stern so 

 broad that the builder seems to have been unable to procure a board 

 large enough to fill it. In this dilemma he took two boards, fitted 

 them into the usual grooves, and inserted between them, along their 

 vertical line of junction, a thin lath of oak, which dovetailed them 

 together and made them water-tight. 



What may have been the nature of the metal out of which these 

 aboriginal tools were fashioned has not yet been ascertained. The 

 square metal nails too, although the marks of their heads were still 

 visible, had themselves wholly disappeared. If they were made of 

 bronze, we cannot assign to the canoes in which they were used a 

 date older than some part, it may have been a very late part, of 

 the Bronze Period. If it can be shown that the metal employed 

 was iron, the age of the antiquities must, in accordance with the 

 received archaeological chronology, be brought still further down 

 towards the present time. 



Two of the canoes were built, not out of a single oak-stem,' but of 

 planks. That of Bankton, already described, had its deals fastened 

 to strong ribs, like a modern boat ; its prow was turned up " like the 

 beak of an antique galley," and its whole build suggests that the 

 islander who constructed it may have taken his model, not from the 

 vessels of his countrymen, but from some real galley that had come 

 from a foreign country to his secluded shores. Nor is this the sole 

 ground for inferring that, at least at the time indicated by some of 

 these canoes, the natives of the west of Scotland had some communi- 

 cation with a more southern and civilized race. How otherwise are 

 we to account for the plug of cork ? It could only have come from 

 the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy. By whom, then, 

 was it brought ? Shall I venture to suggest that the old Briton who 

 used it was not so ignorant of Roman customs as antiquaries have 

 represented him, and that the prototype of the galley-like war-boat 

 may have come from the Tiber to the Clyde ? 



But whether such a suggestion be accepted or not, it is abundantly 

 evident that the elevation of the bed of the estuary, by which the 

 canoes have attained an altitude of sometimes 22 feet above high- 

 water-mark, cannot be assigned to the rude ages of the Stone Period, 

 but must have taken place long after the islanders had become ex- 

 pert in the use of metal tools *. 



* To the conclusion stated in the text, the only objection with which I am 



