452 PfiOCEEDINGS OF THE aEOLOCHCAI. SOCIETY. [Juiie 18, 



would have no hesitation in pronouncing to be Eoman, if found near 

 a Roman station." Mr. Geikie accordingly concludes that " the 

 existence of Eoman pottery in the silt shows us that the deposition 

 of these upraised beds was going on during the Eoman occupation 

 of Britain, and therefore that this rise (of 25 feet) has taken place 

 since the time of the Eomans." 



The whole value of the section, as giving a key to the age of the 

 deposit and a period within which an important change in the rela- 

 tive level of land and water in the valley of the Porth took place, 

 depends on this bed No. 5. I therefore carefully examined it, and 

 satisfied myself that this was not an unaltered silt deposit, but that 

 it had been a cultivated surface, and that its contents had been 

 placed in it by the husbandman in the process of cultivation. I 

 could discover no evidence of internal lamination ; indeed, having 

 carefully examined it with this in view, I am satisfied that it does 

 not exist. Moreover, the contents of the bed, viz. pottery, oyster- 

 shells, and bones, small fragments of coal and coal-cinders, are scat- 

 tered irregularly through the bed without the slightest approach to 

 laminar arrangement. The occurrence of immense quantities of 

 coal-cinders in the bed made me first doubt the antiquity Mr. Geikie 

 gave to it ; for, if the Eomans, when in Britain, used mineral fuel, 

 it certainly was not in the quantity needed to supply such a store of 

 cinders as this supposed bed of littoral silt contains. The cinders 

 also gave me the key to, as I believe, the true nature of the stratum. 

 The section is at the foot of Bowling Green House garden, and this 

 bed evidently at no far distant date formed part of the cultivated 

 surface of the garden, its contents being obtained from the manure 

 that was year after year dug into it. The base of the bed is clay of 

 a lightish colour ; this gradually darkens upwards as it has been in- 

 fluenced by tilling and by the organic matter thus introduced, until 

 it becomes a rich dark soil within two feet of its surface. The two 

 upper beds in Mr. Geikie's section are recent deposits of materials 

 obtained from digging the foundations of houses, as is evidenced by 

 their character, as well as by the large board exhibited at the road- 

 side, permitting " Eubbish to be laid down here free." The dif- 

 ferent localities of the houses supplied the different kinds of over- 

 shot, — some cartloads of sand having been deposited here, of earth 

 there, or of gravel and sand in another place ; but none covering 

 more than a few yards. 



I have recently obtained a considerable number of objects care- 

 fully collected from bed No. 5. Among them are a number of speci- 

 mens of both the kinds of pottery obtained by Mr. Geikie. These I 

 submitted to Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, who, after a minute 

 examination of every specimen, declared that they were certainly 

 not Eoman, but might be the work of any period since the 14th 

 century. I subsequently submitted them to Mr. Franks, also of the 

 Museum, and, without being aware of Mr. Birch's opinion, he con- 

 firmed it, asserting that no portion of them was older than medieval, 

 and that all of them might be comparatively recent. In addition to 

 this testimony it will be remarked that the edges of the fragments 

 are invariably sharp, never rubbed as if they had been acted upon 



