46 DAVID MILNE HOME ON THE 
feet above high water, must have been submerged and exposed, so that any 
wall or rampart on that neck would soon also have succumbed to the waves. 
Then there is the old building at the point of the ness, which, if Roman (as it 
appears to be) must have been at all times under water, even at the lowest tide, 
were Professor GErxiz’s theory correct. 
Perhaps it may be suggested that the tablet, where found, was not in the 
position where it was set up by the Romans. Any one suggesting this impro- 
bable view, must state some grounds for it. The presumptions are all against it. 
It was natural that the tablet, after being set up, should in the course of time 
fall, and fall on its face. In that position it was found, The tablet might fall 
from the decay of the building which supported it ;—or it might have been 
thrown down by the Romans when they had to abandon the district, to pre- 
serve the tablet from the desecration to which it might probably be subjected by 
the natives ;—and there is evidence, that the Romans did follow this practice in 
the case of altar-stones. Or, the tablet might have been discovered by the natives 
while still standing, and been thrown down by them. No other supposition is 
admissible ; for it will scarcely be surmised, that the tablet, having been found 
by the Caledonians in some other part of the Roman rampart, was brought by 
them to the knoll, and thrown down there. As the tablet weighs more than a 
ton, it would have been exceedingly difficult for the natives to have transported 
it any considerable distance, at all events without injury to the sculpturing. 
Therefore the conclusion seems inevitable, that the place where the tablet was 
discovered, is the place where it was originally set up. 
I venture to think that Professor GErxiE, had he known the facts stated in this 
paper, would not have affirmed, as he has done, that the Roman.“ wall was built, 
when the land was at least twenty feet lower than at present.”—Lond. G'eolog. Soc. 
Journal, vol. xviii. p. 209. One of the circumstances founded on by him in 
proof of that position is, that the eastern termination of the wall was (as he 
alleges) at Carriden, where (as he says), so far from “ having any reference to 
the present limit of the tide, it actually stood on the summit of a steep bank 
overhanging the sea, above which it was elevated fully 100 feet. If,” he adds, 
“the land here were depressed twenty-five feet, no part of the wall would be 
submerged.” 
Here, I think, has been the chief cause of the Professor’s mistake. He 
supposed that the wall terminated at Carriden, on a steep bank overhanging 
the sea, at a height of fully 100 feet. Had he been aware of the wall having 
terminated at Bridgeness, and at a height of only nineteen feet above the sea, 
he would at once have seen that it could not have been built, when the land was 
twenty-feet lower than at present. 
When I commenced this paper, I had intended to confine myself to an 
account of the slab found at Bridgeness; but as similar slabs have been 
