260 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
“If the land was then twenty-five feet lower than now, then the 
tablet, and the wall in which it was fixed, must have been six feet under 
the sea at every tide, and must also have been so exposed to the beating 
of the waves that neither tablet nor wall could have stood many weeks. 
It is impossible to suppose that the tablet, with elaborate sculpturing, 
and bearing a dedication to the emperor, could have been set up in such 
a position. Moreover, the neck of land which joins the ness or knoll to 
the mainland being only twenty-three feet above high-water, must have 
been submerged and exposed, so that any wall or rampart on that neck 
would soon also have succumbed to the waves. Then there is the old 
building at the point of the ness, which, if Roman (as it appears to be), 
must have been at all times under water, even at the lowest tide, were 
Professor Geikie’s theory correct.” (Trans. Roy. Soc. Ed., vol. xxvii. 
p. 45.) 
In criticising Sir Archibald Geikie’s speculative deductions, 
founded on the geological and archaeological phenomena connected 
with the western termination of the Antonine Wall on the top of 
Chapel Hill, Mr Home thus expresses himself : — 
“ If the Roman antiquities here mentioned (see page 257) be the same 
as those described in the Statistical Account, their position is not 
correctly stated by Professor Geikie. They can in no sense be re- 
presented as having fallen from the fort above. The relics were found, 
not (as he says) at various depths in the alluvium, but in a subterranean- 
recess — i.e. in a cavity which contained them. As there were vases as well 
as coins, the probability is that it was a grave. Now, as this recess, 
when formed, must have been several feet below the surface of the 
ground, and as the surface of the ground is admitted to have been only 
twenty feet above the present high-water mark, the ‘recess’ must have- 
been at least seven or eight feet under the sea if, during the Roman 
occupation, the land was twenty-five feet lower than now.” (Ibid., p. 48. ) 
Hitherto my chief role in this controversy has been to meet the- 
statements and logic of the advocates of the post-Roman theory 
with a non sequitur on all the points raised — of course utilising for' 
this purpose the arguments advanced against it by previous writers 
on the subject. Henceforth, however, I become a direct supporter- 
of a theory about these beaches which I have elsewhere formulated, 
and which for distinction may be called the pre-Roman theory, 
viz., that the upheaval took place “ subsequent to the appearance 
of man in the district, but prior to its occupation by the Romans.” 
This was the conclusion come to in an address which, as president 
of the Antiquarian Section of the Archaeological Institute, I gave- 
at Lancaster in 1898 (Journal, y ol. 55, pp. 259-285). 
