OF ELIE AND ERROL. 625 



points, also, above Stirling, specimens of whales have been found imbedded in the 

 same clay ; and in two cases it is recorded that there lay beside them rude spear- 

 heads of deer-horn, with which they seem to have been killed. Curiously enough, at 

 Portobello a bed of the same Scrobicularia was found in the brickfield ; and it lay, 

 as Dr M'Bain informs me, at the same height of 15 feet above high-water mark. 

 Thus all round the Firth the evidence points to the same conclusion. The land was 

 at least 14 or 15 feet deeper in the water than now. The sea ran above Stirling, 

 where now there is solid ground, and if the evidence as to those deer-horn weapons 

 may be relied on, it would seem that at the time these shells near Elie were sending 

 up their siphons to be swept by the waters of each returning tide, our forefathers, 

 with their rude harpoons, were hunting the whale, where now only the green 

 fields of the farmer are to be found. 



Another point not less clear is, that the climate must have been much the 

 same as now. In the above section (fig. 6), the Scrobicularia bed is underlaid 

 by two yards of alternating sandy and clayey layers ; and among these, near the 

 base, the following additional species of shells were found : — 



Tellina solidula. 

 Turtonia minuta. 

 Cardium edule. 

 Rissoa ulvse. 



Mytilus edulis. 

 Littorina littorea. 

 Montacuta ferruginosa. 



This group is at once decisive as to the question of climate. Take, for 

 example, the Rissoa, which occurs in great abundance. It lives between tide 

 marks, and is exposed to all atmospheric changes. It seems to have been as 

 abundant when these beds were laid down as now, The climate then must have 

 been much the same as the present. Passing this stage, we come to the third 

 in the descending series, viz. : — 



III. — The Submerged Forest. 

 This we have seen, in Section II., in the act of passing seaw r ard ; it is seen again 

 in Section III, as a thin bed of peat ; but it is especially in Largo Bay that it comes 

 out in full force. Somewhat to the west of the point where Section IV. passes, it 

 is 4 feet in depth (fig. 5), showing a great peaty mass, in which willow and hazel, 

 and especially hazel nuts, were found, with other seeds, mosses, and especially the 

 abundant remains of A rundo phragmites. Though now lying deep under every 

 tide, yet no single marine organism enters into the bed itself. It sweeps for miles 

 all round Largo Bay, and Dr Fleming has described trunks of trees standing in it 

 rooted in the soil beneath. At Aberdeen, in the Tay, at various points in the 

 eastern and southern coasts of England, and again across the Channel and in Jersey 

 and Guernsey, the same deposits are found, and it seems really impossible to 

 resist the inference, that they indicate a time when the land stood higher above 



VOL. XXIV. PART III. 8 G 



