1862.] GEIKIE ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 231 



" There is good reason to think," we find him remarking, *' that both 

 the Solway Firth and the Firths of Clyde and Forth were formerly 

 deeper, and that the tide has flowed further up than it does now;" 

 and thus that " the land seems to have gained here *." 



General Roy, about the middle of last century, made the Eoman 

 antiquities of Scotland the subject of careful study, when they re- 

 mained much more perfect than they do now, after a hundred years 

 of advancing agriculture. He surveyed with a military eye the 

 sites of the forts, camps, ramparts, and highways which the legion- 

 aries had left to mark their presence. " With regard to the position 

 of these forts," he says, *' the Romans seem to have been guided by 

 the same general principles which now-a-days would direct in the 

 execution of works of a like nature. A high and commanding 

 situation hath therefore been their choice, from whence the country 

 could be discovered to a considerable distance all round, but espe- 

 cially towards the north — the quarter from which they were to 

 expect the enemy, — contriving, as often as circumstances would per- 

 mit, that a river, morass, or some difficult ground, by way of obstruc- 

 tion and additional security, should extend at some little way along 

 their front. Thus we find that the forts toward the right occupied 

 the heights which overlook the shores of the Forth, the low carse- 

 lands of Falkirk, and the banks of the Carron." He was con- 

 vinced that these low lands could not have existed then in their 

 present condition. " If," he remarks, " the Falkirk Carses were not 

 entirely overflown in the time of the Romans, it is probable at least 

 that they were then salt-marshes, subject in some degree to tem- 

 porary inundations in high spring tides f." 



Nimmo, in his ^ History of Stirlingshire,' published in 1777, after 

 alluding to the tradition of a harbour having existed on the inner 

 edge of the Falkirk Carse, below Larbert Bridge, and to the fact that 

 pieces of broken anchors had been found in that neighbourhood 

 within the memory of people then living, contends that there was 

 " reason to believe that the firth flowed considerably higher in 

 former ages than it does at present i." 



Lastly, Mr. Stuart, the most recent writer who has treated spe- 

 cially of the Roman antiquities of Scotland, is still more explicit. 

 He declares his belief that '^ the whole of this lower district (towards 

 the mouth of the Carron) had in all likelihood been covered by the 

 sea when the Roman forces occupied the Wall of Antonine. It is 

 likewise probable," he adds, " that the entire plain between Inner- 

 avon and Grahamstown (that is, the whole of the Falkirk Carse) was 

 at the same period subject to the influx of the tide, which may even 

 have penetrated the deeper hollows of the Carron as far up as Duni- 

 pace§." 



* Horsley's 'Britannia,' pp. 157, 160. 

 t ' Military Antiq.' book iv. chap. iii. sect. 2. 

 I ' Hist. Stirlingshire,' Edinburgh, 1777, p. 63. 

 § ' Caledonia Eoraana,' Edinburgh, 1845, p. 177. 



I have not deemed it necessai'y to increase the length of this communication 

 by controverting the alleged Roman origin of certain roadways and other traces 



