284 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



Roman pottery was found, and on which Mr Geikie lays so 

 much stress, and is, indeed, the point d'appui of his whole 

 argument. Instead of finding this bed to be of marine 

 origin, and distinctly stratified, we found it to consist of two 

 distinct beds. The lower one, which rests on gravel, is 

 evidently a marsh silt due to the overflowing of the Water 

 of Leith, and without remains of animals or pottery. The 

 upper portion was distinguished from its lower congener by 

 numerous vesicular coal cinders ; and side by side with the 

 incinerated coals we found oyster-shells, not all lying flat, 

 as deposited in a bed, but at all angles to the horizon, pre- 

 cisely as any one may find them in a bed of humus. We had 

 no difficulty of supplying ourselves with from thirty to forty 

 specimens of pottery, also bones of sheep, the common ox 

 (Bos taurus), teeth of the same, and also of the horse. The 

 pottery was submitted to the inspection of Mr Birch, of the 

 British Museum, the first authority we have as regards pot- 

 tery. His answer was, " Not one piece of Eoman origin." 

 It was ascertained that part of this so-called Eoman pottery 

 owed its formation to a manufactory at Portobello, where 

 elegant jugs, after the Etruscan mould, were made to hold 

 butter-milk, and the others were the remains of neat glazed 

 flower-pots from Holland, which, forty years ago, the skippers 

 brought over to adorn the parlours of their wives. In this 

 bed, No. 5, we frequently met with the stems of tobacco 

 pipes ; and five heads or bowls of pipes were found bearing 

 the initials " T. W" On being submitted to a tobacco-pipe 

 manufacturer in Edinburgh, and asked when they were 

 manufactured, his reply was, " These are the initials of my 

 father-in-law, to whose business I succeeded, and could not 

 have been made before the year 1814, when he founded our 

 establishment." 



But another proof of this bed, No. 5, being a humus bed 

 exists in the testimony of an old man, Thomas Anderson, 

 who, forty years ago, cultivated this identical piece of 

 ground as a market garden, before beds Nos. 6 and 7 were 

 laid down. 



From the Ordnance Survey map I have taken various 

 contour levels of the streets and quays of Leith, to the 



