.1903-4.] Date of Upheaval of Raised Beaches in Scotland. 255 
sticking among the gravel, as if left by the tide on the sea-shore. 
This relic has been preserved by the farmer who found it.* 
“I am also assured that what was considered as the remains of 
an anchor were found some years ago in casting a drain below 
Flaw Craig, a cliff which overlooks the Carse, between Kinnaird 
and Fingask.” 
Mr Chambers takes the precaution to state that for these 
remarks, and others which followed, he quotes from “a letter from 
a lady, the daughter of one of the chief proprietors of the Carse.” 
Subsequently, however, owing to the importance of the subject, 
he recurs to it ( Edin . Phil. Journal , vol. 49, p. 233, 1850), and 
informs us that he “took some trouble to ascertain the precise 
local and geological circumstances of the relic, as observed at the 
time of the discovery. 
It is unnecessary to epitomise the result of this inquiry, the 
upshot of which was that the spot where the boat-hook lay was 
8 feet below the surface, 20 feet above the level of present 
high tides, and about a mile distant from the estuary of the Tay. 
It is advisable, however, to quote the following incidental remarks, 
which seem to contain the germ of a more natural explanation of 
its presence in the locality than that of Sir Archibald Geikie. 
“ One important feature of the Carse in this district is now to 
be adverted to, namely, a trench or ditch in which a little rill 
crosses the plain obliquely to join the estuary in one of those 
creeks locally called poios. The distance of this rill is not 
more than 150 yards from the spot where the boat-hook was 
discovered. It is, in these days of high cultivation, a narrow 
ditch of well-defined sides, but no one can doubt that in other 
times it would comprehend a wider space. Now, the bottom of 
the ditch at this place is so little above the level of the sea that 
an abnormal tide might reach it.” 
After describing several instances of great floods Mr Chambers 
writes : — “With such events as those on record, within the period 
*This object (fig. 2) is now in the National Museum of Antiquities, Edin- 
burgh, and consists of a socketed spike, 11 inches in length, from the middle 
of which the hook curves backwards. The socket is formed by the backward 
folding of the iron, the edges only partially meeting, and in it the handle 
was fixed by a rivet. From its appearance, it might belong to compara- 
tively recent times. 
