400 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



weapons and implements have also been discovered, sometimes 

 at considerable depths in the Carse-deposits. It is extremely 

 interesting to learn that old refuse-heaps or kitchen-middens 

 appear frequently along the inner margin of the Carse. " All 

 the middens observed," Mr. Peach says, "occur on the bluff 

 itself or just at its base, as if, when it was the limit of high- 

 water, the people who formed the middens, after searching the 

 shores during low -water, had retreated thither to enjoy their 

 feast while the tide covered their hunting-ground." Eemains of 

 fireplaces are plentiful among the shell-heaps. 



When the Carse-beds are followed up the valley, they are 

 found rising with a gentle gradient, until eventually they pass 

 into freshwater alluvial deposits of fluviatile origin. Followed 

 down the valley to the shores of the present estuary, the level 

 of the Carse-land falls more or less gradually away to a height 

 of 25 or 30 feet, and still lower terraces succeed down to the 

 most recent alluvium. All these later platforms have evidently 

 been eroded in the estuarine-marine deposits of the Carse — 

 partly by the waters of the estuary itself when they stood at a 

 higher level than at present, and partly by the river Forth and 

 its tributaries during and after the final retreat of the sea. 



Thus in the wide valley of the Forth we have simply a 

 repetition of the phenomena which are presented by the late 

 glacial and postglacial deposits of the Tay and the Earn. After 

 the accumulation of the late glacial beds of the 100-feet terrace, 

 the sea disappeared from the district of Stirling and Falkirk, 

 and left a broad platform of clay and sand exposed to the action 

 of streams and rivers. Owing to the great thickness attained 

 by the Carse-deposits of the Forth, it is not often that the 

 junction between these and the glacial beds can be seen. But 

 along the upper margin of the 50-feet terrace the Carse-beds, 

 which thin off upon the ancient beach, can be observed resting 

 directly upon true glacial deposits. No old river-gravels and 

 overlying forest-bed, such as those of the Tay and Earn, have 

 yet been detected occupying a similar position between the 

 Carse- clays and the glacial deposits of the Forth. But that 



