106 Mr Geikie on a Rise of 
that the fragments from Leith had formed part of one of the 
broken jars, which, however, had been dug up along with other 
Roman remains at Newstead, in Roxburghshire. We have 
no doubt, therefore, that the pieces of pottery embedded in 
the elevated littoral silt of Leith are of Roman origin. 
Along with these remains occurred numerous fragments of 
the bones of some ruminant, apparently a deer. With the 
exception of a broken tibia, all the pieces were of small size, 
like little chips and splinters. There occurred also, as no- 
ticed above, a number of ferruginous pipes of irregular size 
and form, occasionally branching. I have found similar pipes 
in the clay of the Portobello brick-works, where they are 
associated with branches of hazel, thorn, oak, beech, &c., and 
hazel nuts. They arose, probably, from the decomposition of 
ferruginous soil round the decaying stems of plants, though 
they sometimes resemble annelide burrows. 
I have just shown that the bed of silt in which these 
remains occur is a truly stratified deposit, formed by water, 
exactly as a similar silt is being laid down on the shores of 
the Firth at the present day. The occurrence of stratified 
shell-sand and shingle above this silt proves that it was a 
littoral deposit; and the inference is irresistible, that the land 
here has risen about 25 feet since the deposition of these 
littoral strata. Further, the existence of fragments of Roman 
pottery in the silt shows us that the deposition of these up- 
raised strata was going on during the Roman occupation of 
Britain, and therefore that this rise of the land has taken 
place since the time of the Romans. 
This may seem, indeed, a startling deduction, when we con- 
sider the comparatively large increase of land which it de- 
mands, the short interval it allows for the process of eleva- 
tion, and the silence of historians as to any such change of 
level. But these objections are only negative, and cannot be 
entertained in the face of the clear positive evidence of the 
raised beach itself. They are, besides, more apparent than 
real. The rate of elevation, if spread over 2000 years, would 
not be half so rapid as the rise of Sweden at the present day. 
The upheaval, however, was more probably effected during 
the earlier centuries after the Roman occupation. But even if 
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