1862.] OEIKIE ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 225 



If now we cross the island to its eastern coast, we shall find the 

 shores of the Firth of Forth bordered with a belt of upraised alluvial 

 deposits similar to those of the estuary of the Clyde. This belt 

 reaches its greatest extent on the south side of the Firth, where it 

 expands into a broad plain, known as the Carse of Falkirk, the sur- 

 face of which appears almost a dead flat, with a general height of 

 about 20 or 25 feet above high-water-mark. From Stirling the 

 same plain extends westward along both sides of the sinuous river 

 for a distance of 16 or 18 miles. This upper part is called the Carse 

 of Stirling. When these carse-lands are cut through by drains, they 

 are found to consist of fine dark silt, with layers of sand, and of 

 sheUs belonging to species that stiU live in the adjoining estuary. 

 Layers of peat, with great numbers of oak-stems, occur in the silt ; 

 and many parts of the plain, especially above Stirling, are at this 

 moment covered vnth a thick stratum of peat-moss. The occur- 

 rence of finely laminated silt, and layers of marine shells, at a height 

 of 20 or 25 feet above the present high-water, and over many square 

 miles of ground, implies a rise of the land to about the same extent 

 as that indicated by the silt-beds of the Clyde *. 



That this elevation has taken place within the Human period is 

 proved by the existence of human remains at various localities, im- 

 bedded in the upraised alluvium. In the year 1819, on the carse- 

 land of Airthrey, near Stirling, the skeleton of a whale was found 

 imbedded in the silt fully a mile back from the river-bank, and at 

 a height of nearly 25 feet above the high- water-mark of spring- tides. 

 At Dunmore, on the south bank of the estuary, a few years later, a 

 second whale was disinterred from a stiff clay at a height of 23 or 24 

 feet above high- water-level. Again, in 1824, a third whale-skeleton 

 was exhumed from under a covering of peat-moss and clay at Blair- 

 Drummond, which lies seven miles higher up the valley than Air- 

 threy. Beside the bones, both at Blair-Drummond and at Air- 

 threy, lay a piece of perforated deer's horn, unmistakeably a work of 

 human fashioning f. They were, in short, two harpoons, one of 

 them having still partially attached to it the fragments of the wooden 

 handle by which it had been wielded. The circumstances under 



acquainted is a casual remark by Mr. Smith, of Jordan-hill, in his paper on the 

 " Last Changes of Level in the British Islands," Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. viii. p. 58, 

 to the effect that some British tumuli and vitrified forts have been formed with 

 a regard to the present level of sea and land. Now, in the first place, we know 

 absolutely nothing of the age of the vitrified forts. Dr. Wilson, indeed, in his ' Pre- 

 historic Annals of Scotland,' p. 413, discusses them along with the strongholds 

 of the Iron Period. Again, the date of tumuli, I imagine, must be fixed, to 

 a large extent, if not entirely, by the nature of the antiquities found within them. 

 A mere mound of earth or stones may surely belong to any conceivable period of 

 human history. The custom of raising cairns over dead bodies or on the scenes 

 of suicide and murder is still prevalent in some parts of Scotland. 



* For an account of the alluvium of the Forth, see Blackadder, Mem. Wern. 

 Soc. vol. V. p. 424 ; also, Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins, p. 131 ; New Statis- 

 tical Account of Scotland (Stirhngshire). 



t For accounts of these whales, see Edin. Phil. Journ. i. 393 ; Mem. Wern. Soc. 

 iii. 327 ; Edin. Phil. Journ. xi. 220, 415; Mem. Wern. Soc. v. 437,440. See 

 also Wilson's Prehistoric Ann. of Scot. p. 33 ; Owen, Brit. Foss. Mamm. p. 642. 



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