MEMOIR OF REV. JOHN FLEMING, D.D. 663 
Society, by the late HucuH Miuuer and the writer of this Memoir. In these dis- 
cussions, he alluded to the great recession of the sea during the famous Lisbon 
earthquake, and the subsequent wave, nearly 90 feet in height, which swept over 
the land, leaving the detritus of the ocean-bed high up on the shore. He also 
affirmed, that many so called raised sea-beaches were the refuse of extinct fishing 
villages, as he had in his possession a fragment of an earthenware pipkin or 
** sreybeard” which he had found deeply imbedded among shells of the edible 
species; and he hence concluded, that these so called raised sea-beaches dated 
no further back than a time which he called the “Picnic era.” This question 
of raised sea-beaches recalls to remembrance the last geological excursion we 
were privileged to enjoy with him, during the last summer of his life, in company 
with his and my esteemed friend Dr M‘Batn, to the caves near Wemyss Castle, 
on the shores of Fife. These caves had been to him for many years objects of 
ereat interest in regard to this question. They are not so far above the present 
level of the sea as to make the idea improbable that they were caused by the 
action of high tides, though a bank now prevents the highest wave approach- 
ing. He appealed to the small select jury, to decide whether the land had 
been raised or the sea depressed? or (and this was the verdict), that old Ocean, in 
some wild fitful mood, had, by raising up a barrier of shells and shingle, barred 
itself from caves which its billows had hollowed, and where, for thousands of 
years, they had rung their echoes, and abandoned them, as we saw on that bright 
summer day, to the more peaceful sounds of lowing cattle, who were their tenants 
then.* 
In a most interesting memoir, read to the Wernerian Society on the 4th 
February 1815, on the Mineralogy of the Red Head in Angusshire, he gives his 
views in regard to the conflicting theories of WERNER and Hutton, a fertile field 
* While FLemine never denied the existence of raised sea-beaches, he refused to believe that the 
layers of shells and marine debris occurring along our west coast were, in any of the cases which 
he had examined, true raised sea-beaches or sea-bottoms; but that the character and arrangement of 
the marine contents of the deposits clearly indicated that they owed their origin to some violent effort. 
Thus, in the instance first noticed and described by Mr R. Cuamsers, occurring at Granton Quarry, 
he found all the materials of a raised sea-beach, but how were they arranged? The shells whose 
natural habitat was different were confusedly huddled together; the boulders also, which had long 
lain on the beach, and been rounded by the action of the waves, were there, with the limpets adhering 
to them ; but these, in many instances, were discovered attached to the under surface of the stones, or 
lying with their cavities empty and upturned when the stones were removed, clearly showing that 
they had died in this position—a position in which they certainly could not have lived. 
On a closer examination of the materials, it was found that the stones had a general inclination 
towards the north-west, showing that the wave—for it was now evident that it was a storm-raised 
beach—had come in that direction, and that the catastrophe producing the phenomena had been short- 
lived, as the returning waves had been unable to affect the sand which forms the large proportion of 
the bed, so as to enable the stones to regain the horizontal position which gravity required. In the 
case also of the so-called raised sea-beach at Fillyside, described by Hucu Minter, Fiemine noticed 
that the molluscs here also were often found firm in the boulder clay, when the large boulders to 
which they were attached were removed—evidence of the origin of the bed which the strongest advo- 
cate of raised sea-beaches was unable to gainsay. 
VOL. XXII. PART III. 8K 
