392 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



their present positions. As showing the condition of those 

 trees, I may mention that the workmen usually cut them up for 

 firewood. I have described elsewhere * the discovery in this pit 

 of an ancient " dug-out" canoe of pine which occurred on the 

 same horizon as the trees. It lay upon its bottom underneath 

 the whole thickness of the superjacent clay. 2 



That this peat indicates a former land-surface is abundantly 

 proved by the fact that the old soil upon which it rests is 

 usually more or less full of rootlets. Many of these penetrate 

 to a depth of several feet, and are specially numerous when the 

 pavement of the buried forest happens to be a silt or silty sand. 

 The writer of the Old Statistical Account of the district also 

 states that in sinking wells in the Carse-lands "deers' horns, 

 skulls, and other bones," have frequently been found associated 

 with the buried peat, which is quite in keeping with the view 

 that that bed marks an ancient land-surface. At the same time 

 I think it is probable that many of the logs, branches, and twigs 

 of pine which occur frequently in the peat, or resting upon its 

 surface, have been drifted down the valley by water. The fact 

 that the upper surface of the peat in some places contains lines 

 and layers of silt, and that isolated twigs and branches are 

 sometimes scattered through the lower three or four feet of 

 overlying clay and silt, sufficiently demonstrates that all the 

 materials which go to make up the peat-bed did not grow 

 in situ. 



The position of the buried forest and peat at and below the 

 present sea-level shows us very clearly that at the time the 

 vegetation was growing the sea must have been much farther 

 off than it is now — in other words, the land stood then at a 

 relatively higher level. We have seen that the ancient river- 

 deposits, upon the surface of which the old trees flourished, tell 



1 The Scottish Naturalist, vol. v. p. 1. 



2 For further particulars of the interesting "buried forest" of the Earn and 

 Tay valleys, see G. Buist's "Geology of the South-east of Perthshire," Trans, of 

 Highland Society, vol. vii. p. 17 ; also Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, 

 vol. xvi. p. 556 ; and Jamieson "On the History of the Last Geological Changes 

 in Scotland," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxi. p. 184. 



