246 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
“ It is plain that the islanders who built this primitive fleet were not 
only acquainted with the use of metal, but that before they could have 
cut out the more highly-finished canoes they must have been long 
familiar with its use. They must have had serviceable metal tools 
wherewith they could saw an oak through cleanly and sharply at its 
thicker part, make thin oaken boards and planks, and plane down a 
large tree into a smoothly cut and polished canoe. They had advanced, 
too, to a high degree of mechanical ingenuity.” . . . “Two of the 
canoes were built, not out of a single oak stem, but of planks. That of 
Bankton, already described, had its deals fastened to strong ribs like a 
modern boat ; its prow was turned up ‘ like the beak of an antique 
galley, 5 and its whole build suggests that the islander who constructed it 
may have taken his model, not from the vessels of his countrymen, but 
from some real galley that had come from a foreign country to his 
secluded shores. Nor is this the sole ground for inferring that, at least 
at the time indicated by some of these canoes, the natives of the west of 
Scotland had some communication with a more southern and civilised 
race. How otherwise are we to account for the plug 'of cork ? * It could 
only have come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy. 
By whom, then, was it brought ? Shall I venture to suggest that the old 
Briton who used it was not so ignorant of Roman customs as antiquaries 
have represented him, and that the prototype of the galley-like war- 
boat may have come from the Tiber to the Clyde ? But whether 
such a suggestion be accepted or not, it is abundantly evident that the 
elevation of the bed of the estuary, by which the canoes have attained 
an altitude of sometimes 22 feet above high-water mark, cannot be 
assigned to the rude ages of the Stone period, but must have taken place 
long after the islanders had become expert in the use of metal tools. 55 
( Journal , p. 224.) 
The above sweeping deduction, with which he brings the Clyde 
canoe-controversy to an end in conformity with his own views, is 
the weakest link in the whole chain of his arguments, as there is 
really no logical connection between the premises and the con- 
clusion. Nor does it require much critical acumen to expose 
where the fallacy comes in. Some of these Clyde canoes have 
been found above, at, and below present high-water mark. In 
discussing the chronological problems suggested by their respec- 
tive positions, it must be borne in mind that, as boats may be 
submerged in any depth and afterwards become silted up, their 
final positions afford no reliable criterion for determining the 
* One of the Springfield group had a hole in its bottom said to contain a 
cork plug. The Clyde canoes were found at an average depth of 19 feet 
beneath the surface of the ground, and about 100 yards back from the 
original edge of the Clyde, chiefly in a thick bed of finely-laminated sand. 
(Smith’s Newer Pliocene Geology , p. 163.) 
