190J-4.] Date of Upheaval of Raised Beaches in Scotland. 259 
Man, 3rd ed., p. 50 et seq .)* Sir Daniel Wilson ( Prehistoric 
Annals, vol. i. p. 38), and Professor Ramsay ( Geology and 
Geography of Great Britain , p. 251). On the other hand, 
several local geologists raised objections on various grounds to 
the validity of some of his arguments. Mr Alexander Bryson, 
F.R.S.E., contended that the so-called Roman pottery from the 
Leith sand-pit were merely fragments of dishes made, within the 
memory of living persons, at a Portobello manufactory, and of 
glazed flower-pots which skippers were in the habit of bringing 
from Holland to adorn their parlour windows ( Proc . Boy. Phys. 
,Soc., vol. iii. p. 284). In 1873 David Milne Home, Esq., 
successfully controverted his deductions from the height of the 
ends of the Antonine Wall above present sea-level ( Trans . Roy. 
Soc. Edin., vol. xxvii.) — a result mainly due to the discovery in 
1868 of a Roman sculptured tablet which definitely fixed the 
eastern termination of the wall to be at Bridgeness, and not at 
Carriden, as was generally supposed when Sir Archibald wrote his 
paper. 
Mr Home’s chief argument was that the position of the tablet 
.at Bridgeness proved that the Antonine Wall terminated so close 
to the sea as to preclude the idea that, when that wall and tablet 
were inserted, the land could have been 25 feet lower than now. 
The spot where the tablet was found was exactly 19 feet above 
•ordinary spring tides, and at the place where it lay there was a 
quantity of squared stones in a confused heap, some of which bore 
the marks of masons’ tools, evidently forming part of the wall in 
which the tablet had been fixed. At the point, and only one or 
two feet above present high-water mark, a portion of a building 
was discovered, a few yards in length, consisting chiefly of large 
whinstone boulders. The line of this building pointed towards 
the place where the tablet was found, “ so that if the building had 
•continued on the same line, it would have passed through or near 
the site of the tablet.” The effect of these discoveries on the 
post-Roman theory of the upheaval is thus stated : — 
* It appears that Sir Charles Lyell, in consequence of the articles of 
Mr Milne Home, abandoned the post-Roman theory, and accordingly his 
remarks on the subject were deleted from the fourth edition of his Antiquity 
of Man. Trans, of the Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxvii. pp. 39-41. 
