OF THE EARN AND TEITH. 167 



Their Geological Position and Age. 



In regard to the time when these terraces were formed it is difficult to 

 pronounce with confidence, but there are certain indications which deserve 

 attention. 



Near Comrie we find some antiquarian remains which go a good way back 

 into the past. The site of the Roman Camp is close to the village, and a little 

 further to the east there is what the Government Surveyors have laid down as 

 a small roundel or Druidical structure, a circle raised above the surrounding 

 ground, in the middle of which there once stood a rude and apparently 

 unsculptured monolith, now prostrate. These Roman and Druidical remains 

 are all on the expanse of the second terrace formerly referred to. So far back 

 then as they carry us the intermediate terrace had been already formed. 



Leaving archaeology and appealing to the methods of the geologist, it is 

 clear that these deposits have been laid down subsequently to the glacial epoch 

 in Scotland, for no glacier can have touched the valleys since the terraces were 

 deposited. We have traced them on Loch Lubnaig up to a height of 400 feet 

 above the sea, and their state of preservation makes it plain that up to that 

 level at least no glacier nor icecake has since their formation grazed hill or 

 valley. 



It is equally plain, and for the same reason, that the sea had finally retreated 

 from the land. Some minor change of level there may have been about the 

 Carse of Stirling, but already the sea must have finally left the valleys free for 

 the action of the river floods. 



There seems indeed to be good ground for believing that a series of peculiar 

 deposits is interposed between the oldest of these terraces and the glacial 

 epoch. In working back, and trying to make out stratigraphically the place of 

 the highest terrace, we are in contact with a set of gravels, &c, which in the 

 present state of our knowledge are particularly obscure. I refer to a series of 

 mounds or hillocks sometimes round or sinuous, sometimes drawn out as long 

 lines in the form of escars or kames, but invariably when laid open showing 

 that they have been deposited by water in a state of disturbance. Occasionally 

 they come down into the valleys, but for the most part they stretch away out 

 over the higher grounds. Examples are to be seen along the course of the 

 Earn, but they are still more striking on the Teith, and especially near the 

 village of Dalvaich. In sketch 12 it will be observed that the highest terrace c 

 is shown in two stages. Following the oldest and highest of these stages it 

 appears to connect itself with the deposits in question, which, a little to the 

 west of Dalvaich and north of the turnpike road, begin to spread out and go far 

 up over the face of the country. One of these lines of kames is given in sketch 

 16 showing another and higher ridge of the same kind behind it. The end 



