752 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
of marine organisms, and the absence of any trace of these is no 
proof that the land may not then have stood, relatively to the sea, 
some 45 or 50 feet lower than it does at present. 
It is in the upper reaches of the Firth of Forth that the 45-50 feet 
beach is best developed. In the neighbourhood of Falkirk and 
Stirling the deposits of this level form the well-known Carse-lands 
— extensive sheets of mud, silt, clay, and sand, containing in many 
places recent sea-shells, such as Gardium edule, Ostrea. edulis, 
Cyprina islandica, Littorina litorea, Trophon clathratus, Buccinum 
undatum, &c. The upper limits of this great fiat are well marked 
out by bluffs and banks — the old coast-lines. Of its marine origin, 
therefore, there can be no doubt. Now, throughout the Carse- 
deposits there occurs at various levels much drifted vegetable 
debris, consisting of the trunks, branches, and twigs of such trees as 
birch, hazel, pine, and oak, and associated with these oyster-shells 
often appear in abundance. Eemains of the whale,* dug-out canoes, 
and rude implements and weapons have likewise been discovered in 
the same deposits, while along what was the old shore-line kitchen- 
middens are frequently met with. Ail the middens, as Mr Peach 
observes, “ occur on the bluff itself or just at its base, as if when it 
was the limit of high-water, the people who formed the middens, 
after searching the shores during low-^water, had retreated thither to 
enjoy their feast while the tide covered their hunting-ground.” 
It is noteworthy that when those Carse-deposits are followed up the 
valley, they are found rising with a gentle gradient, until eventually 
they pass into fresh- water alluvial deposits of sand and gravel of 
fluviatile origin. Here, then, at the head of the Firth of Forth, we 
meet with the counterparts of the Musselburgh beds. The evidence 
shows that at a time when the sea washed the 45-50 feet level the 
Eiver Forth, flowing in much greater volume than at present, carried 
down to its estuary enormous quantities of drift-wood, some of 
which got bedded in the sand of the lower reaches of the river, 
.some in the silt and mud of the estuary, while much no doubt 
found its way eventually out to the open sea. The Musselburgh 
* Professor Turner informs me that the skeletons of large whales, which 
from time to time have been found embedded in the Carse-deposits of the Forth 
valley, so far as they have been critically examined, have been determined to 
belong to the genus Balcenoptera, and are not examples of the Balcena mysticetus, 
or Greenland whale, as is generally believed. 
