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THAT the British Isles do not wear now | shores, will be acknowledged by every the same look which they had when the one. And yet, if the question be asked, earliest human population settled on their * Prehistoric Annals of Scotland. By D. WIL

SON. Edinburgh. 1851.

Tytler's History of Scotland. Vol. II.
Glasgow: Past and Present. Glasgow. 1856.
Ancient Sea-Margins. By ROBERT CHAMBERS.
Edinburgh. 1848.

On the last Changes of Level in the British Isl ands. (Mr. SMITH of Jordanhill,) Memoirs Wernerian Society. Vol. VIII.

Vols.

Sketch of the Geology of Fife and the Lothians.
By CHARLES MACLAREN. Edinburgh. 1839.
Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal.
XXXI. to XXXVI.; and new Series, Vol. XIV.
Macmillan's Magazine for February, 1862.
Abstracts of Proceedings of Geological Society.
No. 79. For March 19th, 1862.

Statistical Account of Scotland. Last Edition.
Memoirs of the Wernerian Society. Vol. II.
A History of British Animals. By Rev. JOHN
FLEMING, D.D. Edinburgh. 1828.

VOL. LVII.-NO. 1

In what particulars does the difference consist? it is probable that in nine cases out of ten, the answer will have reference chiefly to the contrast between the people of the nineteenth century and the savage aborigines. It will be admitted, of course, that the primitive forest has been cleared away, that heath-lands have been reclaimed, that agriculture has spread over the plains, and crept up the sides of the hills and mountains, converting the land into one great garden. But attention will be chiefly drawn to the human change, of which, indeed, these revolutions in the scenery form a part. We shall be presented with pictures of primeval life in the wilds of Britain, when, amid gloomy woods, the native tattooed himself with

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woad and pursued the deer and the wild | sion. He refuses to admit that there is a boar; and, as a counterpart to such pic- point where geological time ends, and artures, we shall be referred to our railways chæological time begins. All time is geoand manufactories, and the immense logical, the present as much as the remotamount of knowledge and power which est past. All evidence, therefore, no matbelongs to the present age. All this is ter from what source derived, if it throws very true. Nevertheless it is only one light on any geological change, may be side of the question, and only a partial an- legitimately claimed by the geologist. In swer to the inquiry. Man has changed the course of the following pages we shall prodigiously within these islands of ours, cite as witnesses, historians, antiquaries, but the very islands themselves have annalists, and poets, cairns, tumuli, stone changed too. And this wholly irrespec- implements, canoes, bronze weapons, antive of man or his doings. chors, coins-in short, every kind of testimony that seems to illustrate the progress of geological change in this island within the human period.

We propose in the following article to sketch in outline the character and progress of the physical changes which Scotland can be shown to have undergone since man first set foot on its shores. The subject, indeed, is too wide in its bearings to be satisfactorily compressed into the compass of a few pages; yet enough may perhaps be said to indicate the nature of these changes, and to show that they exactly resemble those which are still in progress, and those also which were completed in the course of the long ages that preceded the birth of man. Such an inquiry is eminently useful in linking more closely together the human period in which we live with these earlier periods. It tends to show that throughout all time there has been a uniformity and a harmony in the operations of nature, and that in studying the present economy we obtain a key to the past history of the earth. Geology, indeed, is a thing as much of the present as of the past; it deals not less with the living than with the dead. The action of the sea on the shore-the effects of frosts, rains, and rivers in wearing away the surface of the land-the agency of earthquakes and volcanoes-the growth of vegetable soil, and the entombment of both vegetable and animal exuviæ in sedimentary accumulations-these form as truly parts of the necessary studies of every geologist as does the history of any of the geological periods. Man himself is an object of geological contemplation. His remains, whether the bones of his body or the work of his hands, when found imbedded in ordinary stratified deposits, are in reality true fossils, and should be dealt with as such in geological research. In trenching, therefore, upon what has hitherto been regarded as the exclusive domain of the antiquary, the geologist only carries out the principles of his science to their logical conclu

But what do we mean by the human period? It includes, of course, all the centuries that have passed away since man first took possession of these islands. But how many centuries go to make up the sum of that period? Well nigh two thousand years have come and gone since the Roman eagle first made its way through the dim forests of ancient Caledon. And yet these two thousand years carry us but a limited way up that long vista, in whose fading distance we can faintly descry the first traces of man. When Agricola crossed the Forth, and advanced toward the Grampians, he found a fierce and warlike race, armed with large blunt-pointed swords and targets, with which they skillfully defended themselves against the missiles of the legionaries. But long before these wild natives attained the use of metal tools, they had passed through an earlier stage of civilization, in which their implements were formed of stone. According to the received classification of archæologists, there was first a Stone Period-the age of flint arrows and stone hatchets. Then came the Bronze Period, when the metals that occur native, and are, therefore, easily worked, were adopted as the material out of which the implements alike of war and peace were fashioned. Last of all we have the Iron Period, when an advancing civilization had learnt the more difficult metallurgical processes of iron-smelting. Now it was in this last period that the Roman invasion took place. The natives had long relinquished the use of stone implements; they had even found out the value of that metal which still remains almost the right-hand of civilization. Moreover, evidence is not wanting to show that, before the Britons of Agricola's

days, there had been an earlier race, which may have previously inhabited the island for a long period. In the older tumuli, for instance, there occur skulls of a type which differ from that of the Celtic family, and must have belonged to a long extinct people. Such changes in the races, and in the material and character of their workmanship, can not be accounted for without calling in a long lapse of time. There is, therefore, no escape from the conclusion, that a human population must have existed in Scotland for many centuries previous to the beginning of our era. And the more we study the question, especially in the light that is cast upon it by the disclosures in other countries, the more extended does this human period appear. In the mean time, however, no data exist to justify any attempt to define its duration by years or centuries. We can but rest contented with the assurance that, in regard to the limits of authentic history, the prehistoric annals of the country date from a time that must be

very remote.

Within so dim and undefined, yet so protracted a period, much may have been done by the geological agents of nature in permanently altering the face of the country. Man, too, may have played his part not only in changing the surface, but in modifying the distribution of its plants and animals. In the succeeding pages, it may be useful to inquire-first, What amount of alteration can be shown to have been effected by the elements since man inhabited the country; and second, How far man himself has coöperated in the general change. In this investigation, it will be advantageous to disregard the earlier ages of the human period, and confine our remarks to the centuries that fairly come within the domain of history-that is, to the events of the last two thousand

years.

Before any attempt to ascertain what has been the progress of change over the surface of the country, some preliminary remarks are needed on the aspect of that surface at the beginning of the period in question. When the curtain first rises from the island about the beginning of the Christian era, it reveals a dreary expanse of forest and bog, of lonely lakes and heath-covered hills; hordes of wild animals, and tribes of still wilder men; no villages nor towns; no tillage nor cultivation, but a land of violence and war,

from which the very light of heaven seemed ever shrouded by dark and noisome mists. Doubtless the Roman historians, by whom such pictures were drawn, exaggerated the unsightliness and desolation of the country; for, if matters had really been so bad as they were painted, one can not very well see why the Cæsars should have made such exertions to conquer these regions, and for several centuries should have sacrificed so many men and so much money to retain them. Of the former wide extent of the forests of Scotland, however, there can be no doubt. Their remains are still partially preserved in peat-bogs, and their names and distribution have also in part been handed down by tradition and by history. A thick but irregular belt of woodland covered the Lowlands, as in the forest of Drumselch round Edinburgh, and that which, spreading over Linlithgowshire, extended northward into Stirling. In the southern uplands there were the forests of Lauderdale and Gala Water; of Jedburgh and Selkirk, Cottenshope, Maldersley, Ettrick, and Peebles; of Dolar, Traquhair, and Melrose; and of Senecastre in Ayrshire. The counties of Clackmannan and Fife were dark with woodland. The forests of Uweth and Cardenie stretched northward across the Tay to join those of Plater, Drymil, and Alyth, which swept over the undulating surface of Forfar and Kincardine. Aberdeenshire, too, was covered with wood; it boasted the great forests of Kintore, of Cardenache, Drum, Stocket, Killanal, Sanquhar, Tulloch, Gasgow, Darrus, Collyn, and what in old records is styled the new forest of Innerpeffer. The forest of Boyne descended into Banffshire, while to the west lay the vast forests of Spey, of Alnete and Tarnaway, of Awne, Kilblane, Langmorgan, of Elgin, Forres, Lochindorb, and Inverness, and, westward still, the lonely forests of Ross and Sutherland.*

From the same sources of information, we learn that, on the whole, the vegetation must have been much the same as at present, though some of the trees were proportionally more numerous, and attained a much larger size than they do now.

The Scotch fir clothed the hillsides with a shaggy mantle of somber green, enlivened by the brighter hue of

*See Tytler, Hist. Scot., vol. ii.

some parts of the county of Fife, where, especially toward the west, among the hollows and valleys of the trappean hills, there were once dozens of pools and tarns, where now nothing can be seen but meadows and cornfields. Of the number and extent of the morasses, the existing peat-bogs, which are, to some extent, their representatives, enable us to form some conception. The Roman historians are loud in their denunciations of the deadly swamps, into which their savage foes retreated, but whither they durst not venture to pursue them. Xiphiline tells how the Caledonians, "whose chief exercise was robbing," would turn into the fens up to the neck, and live there several days without eating. Herodian describes them as swimming or running through the morasses, up to the waist in mud; for, being nearly naked, they paid no regard to the dirt. Severus, too, lost fifty thousand men, and likewise hastened his own death, in the vain attempt to cut down the forests and dry up the mosshags of Caledonia. Such was the general aspect of the country at the beginning of the period, the geological changes of which have now to be considered: it was a land of bare and barren mountains, of wide forests filled with beasts of the chase, of innumerable lakes haunted by waterfowl, and of endless bogs and morasses, that stretched out their dreary flats of brown heath and brushwood, or of black mire and green scum.

many a stately oak; the glens were feath- | better illustration could be given than ered over with tremulous birch and mountain-ash; here and there in the landscape stood a dark and solitary yew, or, perchance, a wych-elm spread its leaves over some livelier patch of verdure; hazelcopses ran in wild luxuriance over the lower grounds; while the marshy plains were clothed and the lakes were fringed with the alder and the willow. The remains of all these trees have been dug out of the depths of the Scottish peatmosses; and the abundance in which some of them occur there, shows how largely they must have contributed to the ancient forests. The oaks are especially numerous; and we know, moreover, that they continued to be so down to at least the beginning of the fourteenth century. Edward I. used to reward those who submitted to his authority in Scotland, by presenting them with gifts of stags and oaks from the forests which he found in possession of the Crown. Thus, on the eighteenth August, 1291, we find him directing the keeper of the forest of Selkirk to deliver thirty stags to the Archbishop of St. Andrews, twenty stags and sixty oaks to the Bishop of Glasgow, ten to the High Steward, and six to Brother Brian, Preceptor of the Order of Knights Templars in Scotland.* Some of these trees must have been of enormous size. The present old oaks of Hamilton, which may represent a part of the ancient Caledonian forest, do not exceed from twelve to eighteen feet in the length of their trunks. But in ancient times the trees grew to three or four times that hight. Thus near Loudon Hill, in Ayrshire, an oak taken out of a peat-moss measured forty-eight and a half feet in length, with a circumference of ten feet at a distance of about ten yards from the base. It was estimated to contain five hundred and thirty-four feet of measurable tim-known agencies which are lodged deep beber.

A land so densely clothed with wood must have enjoyed a humid climate, and could not but have possessed a great many lakes and morasses. It is a fact that, in former centuries, the number of lakes in Scotland was considerably larger than now. Wide districts which have been free of them for two or three hundred years, can yet be shown to have been formerly dotted over with lakes.

*Tytler, ib.

I. In estimating the amount of change. which has been effected since the historical epoch, by the various elements of nature on the surface of such a country as Scotland, we have to consider, first of all, whether or not the land has been subjected to the influence of those powerful but little

neath the external envelope of the earth's crust; whether it has been raised above, or depressed beneath its former level--whether it has been disturbed by earthquake movements, or whether all these forms of subterranean activity may not have been displayed simultaneously or in succession. We may next inquire what may have been the effect of the sea on the shores, how much of the coast the waves can be No shown to have worn away in one part, how much they may have heaped up in others, and also how far they may have

been effected. Round the greater part of the sea-margin of Scotland there runs a flat selvage of sandy or clayey ground, varying in breadth from six or seven miles to not more than a few feet. This level terrace rises from twenty to thirty feet above high-water mark, and is composed of horizontal layers of sand, gravel, or clay, full of littoral shells, the whole having unquestionably been assorted by the sea. Along the inner margin of the terrace, the ground sometimes rises as a line of steep bank, just as in other parts of the coast-line a steep cliff of rock shoots upward from the sea. The resemblance goes still further; for the inland cliff that bounds so many

affected the position of maritime towns and harbors. The agency of the wind in driving sand-hills over large districts, of frosts in scarping cliffs and hill-sides, of floods in widening and altering rivercourses and destroying the works of man, of streams in silting up their estuaries, and of vegetation in aiding or retarding the general decay of the surface and in filling up lakes-all these agencies require to be considered in detail before a broad view can be gathered of the actual amount of variation between the present and a former aspect of the country. Within the compass of the present article, it will not be possible to do more than present a mere outline of some of the more import-portions of the terrace is not unfrequently ant of these various forms of change.

That, during the last two thousand years, Scotland has been subjected to subterranean movements, admits of easy proof. There is evidence that a part, if not the whole, of the country, has been actually upheaved at least twenty feet above its previous level, and that from time to time it has been shaken by earthquakes of greater or less intensity. The upheaval must have been slow and gradual: it went on century after century, without apparently attracting the notice of the inhabitants of the island; at least no record of its progress is preserved in the pages of any of the chroniclers who have recounted the fabulous deeds of those mythic heroes and kings that form the subject of the earlier chapters of Scottish history. Nevertheless, the fact that the country has actually been upraised rests on the most incontrovertible proofs. We see traces of it all round the shores of the island. The old beach which preceded the present one can still be traced with as much certainty as if the waves had only left it yesterday, and we could still gather from its surface the sea-weed and shells cast up by the last storm. Beneath this ancient beach are deposited canoes, stone hatchets, harpoons, pottery, anchors, boathooks, and other relics of the former presence of man. It is clear, therefore, that the last upheaval of the land must be an event that dates from a period certainly more recent than the time when the first human population settled in Scotland.

But before attempting to point out, from the only evidence now available, what may have been the date of this great change, it will be well to dwell a little on the proofs that such a change has actually

scarped into clefts and creeks, and perforated with long dim caverns. It is indeed feathered over with ferns, and ivy, and trailing briers; the rocks are tinted with mosses and lichens, luxuriant bunches of harts'-tongue hang from the roofs of the caves, and swallows build their nests among the rocks. But divest the cliff of all this tapestry of verdure, strip the flat terrace of its mantle of gardens and fields, and you then lay bare a sandy flat that terminates against a line of bare and wasted rocks. You, in fact, reconstruct an old coast-line, and you can no more doubt that the sea once rolled over that terrace and broke against that cliff, than that the waves are breaking over the beach to-day. Instead of the flat cornfields and orchards of the terrace, imagine a tract of sand and mud; for the mosses, and lichens, and ferns, substitute a shaggy covering of sea-weed; in place of swallows, and martins, and rockpigeons, people the rocks with gulls, and auks, and cormorants, and let the tides come eddying across the terrace among the rocks of the cliff; and you thus restore the coast-line to the condition in which it existed at a comparatively recent geological period. If you could gently depress the land for some twenty or thirty feet, you would actually bring back the old outline of the Scottish shores. Evidence of the truth of these remarks must be familiar to every one who has visited almost any part of the coast-line of Scotland. The old or upraised beach runs as a terrace along the margin of the Firth of Forth; it forms the broad Carse of Falkirk, and the still wider Carse of Gowrie; it is visible in sheltered bays along the exposed coasts of Forfar, Kincardine, and Aberdeen. On the west side of the island, its

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