284 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
Eoman 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-ly w, 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 
