On the Rise of the Shores of the Firth of Forth. 291 



Mr Geikie's views have certainly changed very much since 

 this was written. I read a quotation from his recent work :* — 



" It might have been supposed that the comparatively 

 sheltered estuary of the Firth would be free from any 

 marked abrasion by the sea, yet even so far up as Gran ton, 

 near Edinburgh, during a fierce gale from the north-east, 

 stones weighing a ton or more have been known to be 

 torn out of a wall and rolled to a distance of thirty feet. 

 Hence, within the last few generations the sea has made 

 encroachments, sometimes to a considerable extent, along 

 the whole coast of the Firth, even as far up as Stirling. 

 Tracing the southern shores in a westerly direction from 

 Dunbar, we find that the low sandy tracts at the mouth of 

 the Tyne, and again from North Berwick to Aberlady, 

 have suffered loss in several places. Further on, near Mus- 

 selburgh, there was a tract of land on which the Dukes of 

 Albany and York used to play at golf in former days, but 

 which is now almost entirely swept away. The coast of 

 Edinburghshire has in like manner lost many acres of land. 

 Maitland, for instance, in his ' History of Edinburgh/ 

 describes the ravages of the sea between Musselburgh and 

 Leith which had occasioned the ' public road to be removed 

 further into the country ; and the land being now vio- 

 lently assaulted by the sea on the eastern and northern 

 sides, all must give way to its rage, and the Links of South 

 Leith probably in less than half a century will be swallowed 

 up. The road alluded to has had to be removed again and 

 again since this passage was written. Mr Stevenson re- 

 marked in 1816 that even the new baths, erected but a few 

 years before at a considerable distance from the high- water 



pears to have existed between the rate of submergence in the east of the coun- 

 try and that in the west. During the Lower Carboniferous period (as I have 

 shown elsewhere) the area of the Lothians probably subsided several thou- 

 sand feet more than the district now occupied by the counties of Lanark 

 and Ayr. — See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xvi. p. 312. 



* The Scenery of Scotland, viewed in connection with its Physical Geo- 

 logy. By Archibald Geikie, F.E.S., &c. &c. With a Geological Map, by Sir 

 Roderick Murchison and Archibald Geikie. London and Cambridge : Mac- 

 millan & Co. 1865. 



vol. nr. 2 p 



