1862.] GEIKIE — ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 227 



elevation above the level of high water is about the same as that of 

 the raised beaches of the Forth and Clyde. Like these also, it con- 

 sists of clay, sand, gravel, and layers of shells, and proves an up- 

 heaval of from 20 to 30 feet. The analogy holds still further ; for 

 the old alluvial deposits of the Tay furnish evidences that the rise 

 has been effected within the Human period. 



Mr. Robert Chambers* has pointed out that along the Carse of 

 Gowrie many of the hillocks and eminences which rise above the 

 general level of the plain bear names in which the Celtic word inch 

 (island) occurs ; such are Inchyra, Megginch, Inchmichael, Inch- 

 martin, Inchsture, — ^' as if a primitive people had originally recog- 

 nized these as islets in the midst of a shallow firth." But, besides 

 these names, the Carse is still full of traditions that represent the sea 

 as having once advanced inland a long way from the present margin 

 of the Forth. Time out of mind, it has been a popular belief in this 

 district that the Flaw Craig, a cliff which overlooks the Carse be- 

 tween Kinnaird and Fingask, bore the remains of a ring to which 

 ships were fastened when the sea ran at the base of the hill. Mr. 

 Chambers adds that, a few years before the appearance of his volume 

 on * Ancient Sea Margins,' " there was a man living who alleged 

 that he had seen this ring in his youth, as he climbed bird-nesting 

 along the face of the crag. So also it is told that the rock on 

 which Castle Huntly stands, in the centre of the Carse, once had rings 

 fixed to it, for mooring the boats formerly used in sailing over the 

 surrounding waters f." These circumstances all conspire to indicate 

 that the rise of the Carse of Gowrie above the limits of the sea is a 

 comparatively recent event. If there were no other evidence, how- 

 ever, such traditional beliefs would hardly be worth the serious 

 attention of the geologist ; but they acquire a peculiar significance 

 from the fact that they are fully borne out by the character of the 

 antiquities from time to time exhumed from the clay and sand of 

 this great plain. 



Between sixty and seventy years ago a small anchor was dug up, 

 not many feet beneath the surface, on a piece of low ground near 

 Megginch J. Mr. Chambers refers to another anchor as having been 

 met with in casting a drain below the Flaw Craig §. But the most 

 important and the most carefuUy investigated relic yet discovered in 

 this district was an iron boat-hook, found in 1837 by some work- 

 men on the farm of Inchmichael ||. It lay imbedded under eight 



* 'Ancient Sea Margins,' p, 18. t Ibid. pp. 19, 20. 



X New Stat. Ace. Scotland, Perth, x. p. 378. 



§ 'Ancient Sea Margins,' p. 19. 



II Mr. Chambers, in the work already cited, briefly alludes to this relic ; but he 

 subsequently made it the subject of a very careful investigation, and published 

 the results in a paper (Edin. New Phil. Journ. 1850, p. 233), from which the 

 particulars above given are quoted. From the fact of the implement being iron, 

 he admitted that it must have belonged to no very remote period, and that the 

 rise of the land, if at least this boat-hook were to be taken as evidence, must have 

 been greatly more recent than any one had imagined. To such a conclusion he 

 demurred, and accordingly he endeavoured to account for the position of the 

 boat-hook by some other means than an elevation of the Carse. For this pur- 

 pose he supposed that the vessel in which it was used may have been swept inland 



