FOOTNOTES:
[20] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 179.
[21] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 462.
[22] Ibid. Introd. p. xxxiii.
[23] British Association for Advancement of Science, Report for 1847, p. 31; and Owen, Introd. p. xxxiii.
[24] Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 107. An interesting account of the discovery of antiquities of human remains in Kent's Hole, one of the most remarkable British ossiferous caves, is given in a subsequent chapter from the narrative of the Rev. J. M'Enery, F.G.S.
[25] Ibid. p. 197.
[26] History of British Animals, p. 24.
[27] British Fossil Mammals, p. 500.
[28] British Fossil Mammals, p. 162.
[29] Anniversary Address to the Zoological Society, 1830.
CHAPTER II.
ABORIGINAL TRACES.
Though we are assured, and cannot doubt, that man was created an intelligent being, capable of enjoying the high faculties with which he alone of all the denizens of earth was endowed, we have no reason to assume that he had any conception of the practical arts by which we are enabled to satisfy wants of which he was equally unconscious. We know on the same authority that there existed a period in the history of our race, ere Zillah, the wife of Lamech, had borne to him Tubal-cain, "the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron," when men tilled the ground, pursued the chase, made garments of its spoils, and constructed tents to dwell in, without any knowledge of the working in metals, on which the simplest of all our known arts depend. Through such a stage of primitive arts most, perhaps all, nations have passed. We detect evidences of it among the Egyptians, old as the date of their civilisation appears, in the stone knives of the embalmers, still frequently found in the catacombs. By such only could the incision be made in the side of the dead, through which to extract the intestines; and when they had been cleansed and replaced, the eye of Osiris, the judge of the dead, was placed as a mysterious seal over the sacred incision. The feeling in which such a custom originated, arising from the veneration which appears to be universally attached to whatever is ancient, is easily understood. While the knife of bronze or iron was freely employed for all ordinary purposes, the primitive stone implement was retained unchanged for the sacred incision in the dead. So also, probably from a like idea directly borrowed from the Egyptians, the stone or flint knife appears to have been used by the early Hebrews in circumcision. Zipporah, Moses' wife, took a sharp stone, or stone knife, and cut off the foreskin of her son. The like was done when Joshua renewed the same rite at Gilgal in the east border of Jericho; while a still more remarkable community of feeling with the veneration of the ancient Egyptians for the otherwise obsolete implement of stone, is discernible in its retention by the priests of Montezuma as the instrument of human sacrifice.
The substitution of flint, stone, horn, and wood, in the absence of metal weapons and implements, must be abundantly familiar to all, in the customs of society when met with in a rude and primitive condition. The Fins and Esquimaux, the African bushmen, and the natives of such of the Polynesian Islands as are rarely visited by Europeans, still construct knives and arrow-heads of flint or fish-bone, and supply themselves with wooden clubs and stone adzes and hammers, with little consciousness of imperfection or deficiency in such appliances. Examples of such a state of arts and human skill might be multiplied from the most dissimilar sources. It seems, as has been already remarked, to be a stage through which all nations have passed, not without each developing a sufficient individuality to render their arts well worthy of investigation by their descendants. To this primitive era of history we refer under the name of The Stone Period.
In this state were the Scottish, and indeed the whole British aborigines, at an era much more remote than chronologists have been willing to assign for the occupation of the island by a human population, and for a period the duration of which we are also able in some degree to test.
There is one certain point in this inquiry into primitive arts which the British antiquary possesses over all others, and from whence he can start without fear of error, though I am not aware that its importance in this view has heretofore been noted. From our insular position it is unquestionable that the first colonist of the British Isles must have been able to construct some kind of boat, and have possessed sufficient knowledge of navigation to steer his course through the open sea. Contrasting the aboriginal arts to which we have referred with the appliances of later navigators, it seems only reasonable to conclude that the bark of the primeval Columbus, who led the way from the continent of Europe to the untrodden wilds of Britain, differed no less from the caravel of the bold Genoese, than that did from the British ship that now follows in its course. Can we recover the history of such primitive caravel? It seems not improbable that we may. Time has dealt kindly with the frail fleets of the aboriginal Britons, and kept in store some curious records of them, not doubting but these would at length be inquired for.
It is by no means to be presumed as certain that the early navigators chose the Straits of Dover as the readiest passage to the new world they were to people. Both Welsh and Danish traditions point to a migration from Jutland. Whencesoever the first emigrants came, Providence alone could pilot their frail barks. Successive migrations, the chances of shipwreck, or the like independent causes, may have landed the fathers of the British race on widely different parts of our island coast. It is a well established fact, that at later periods many distinct and rival centres of population were thus established throughout the British Isle.
Lochar Moss, a well-known tract in Dumfriesshire, occupies an area of fully twelve miles in length, by between two and three miles in breadth, extending to the Solway Frith. Its history is summed up in an old popular rhyme, still repeated in the surrounding districts:—
"First a wood, and next a sea,
Now a moss, and ever will be!"
Lying as it does on the southern outskirts of the Scottish kingdom, the track of many successive generations has lain along its margin or across its treacherous surface, beneath which their records have been from time to time engulfed, to be restored in after ages to the light of day. To these we shall have occasion again to refer; but among them our chief attention is meanwhile attracted by its ancient canoes, repeatedly found along with huge trunks of trees, hazel-nuts, acorns, and other traces of the forest, and also, according to the old statist of Torthorwald parish, "anchors, cables, and oars," the no less obvious heirlooms of the sea. During the last century the peats cut from this moss formed almost the sole supply of fuel to the inhabitants of Dumfries and its neighbourhood, nor have they yet ceased to avail themselves of its ready stores.
In 1782 Pennant examined one of these rude barks formed from the trunk of an oak, which he thus describes: "Near a place called Kilblain, I met with one of the ancient canoes of the primeval inhabitants of the country, when it was probably in the same state of nature as Virginia when first discovered by Captain Philip Amidas. The length of this little vessel was eight feet eight inches, of the cavity six feet seven inches, the breadth two feet, depth eleven inches, and at one end were the remains of three pegs for the paddle. The hollow was made with fire in the very manner that the Indians of America formed their canoes. Another was found in 1736, with its paddle, in the same morass. The last was seven feet long, and dilated to a considerable breadth at one end, so that in early ages necessity dictated the same inventions to the most remote regions."[30] In 1791 the minister of the parish describes another found by a farmer while digging for peats, at a depth of between four and five feet from the surface, and four miles from the highest reach of the tide, resting apparently on the alluvial soil which is there found beneath the moss. Near to the same spot a vessel of mixed metal, and apparently of great antiquity, was recovered, and numerous relics of various kinds, including what are described as anchors, oars, and other naval implements, have been found even at a distance of twelve miles from the present flood-mark—attesting at once the former populousness of the district, and the very remote period to which these evidences of its occupation belong.[31] At a depth of seven or eight feet in the Moss of Barnkirk, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newton-Stewart, Wigtonshire, another canoe of the same character as those already described, was dug up in 1814, and has been preserved, owing to its being converted by the farmer into the lintel of one of his cart-sheds. Mr. Joseph Train mentions having seen "a ball of fat or bannock of tallow, weighing twenty-seven pounds,"[32] found in the moss immediately above the canoe; and which no doubt was a mass of adipocere, indicating the spot where some large animal had perished in the moss: possibly sinking along with the rude British vessel that lay below. On the draining of Carlinwark Loch, Kirkcudbright, in 1765, a stone dam, an ancient causeway constructed on piles of oak, the vestiges of an iron forge, and other remarkable evidences of human industry and skill, were brought to light, including various canoes, described, like those of Lochar Moss and others found in Merton Mere, as apparently hollowed by fire.[33]
The Loch of Doon in Ayrshire, has at different periods furnished similar relics of ancient naval art. The fall of its waters in 1832, owing to an unusually protracted drought, permitted the recovery of two of these in a perfect state, one of them measuring about twenty-three feet in length, formed of a single oak tree, with the insertion of an upright plank into a broad groove for the stern. Numerous other relics of canoes were found to be imbedded in the same place; and the head of an ancient battle axe, a rude oak club, with other remains, gave further clue to the character of their builders.[34]
Lochwinnoch in Renfrewshire, has furnished similar canoes, accompanied by other relics of various eras—a brass ladle or patera, with an elegant handle terminating with a ram's head, probably Roman; and a very fine brass cannon, marked J. R. S. (5?) an antiquity of comparatively modern date.[35]
Five fathoms deep in the Carse of Falkirk, a complete boat was discovered, not far from the town, and therefore remote from any navigable water.[36] Sir John Clerk, well known as an enthusiastic Scottish antiquary of last century, describes with great minuteness another vessel found in the same locality, more remarkable from its size and construction than any of those yet described, and which he pronounces, from the series of superincumbent strata, to have been an antediluvian boat! In the month of May 1726 a sudden rise of the river Carron undermined a portion of its banks, and exposed to view the side of this ancient boat lying imbedded in the alluvial soil, at a depth of fifteen feet from the surface, and covered by successive strata of clay, shells, moss, sand, and gravel. The proprietor immediately ordered it to be dug out. It proved to be a canoe of primitive form, but of larger dimensions than any other discovered to the north of the Tweed. It measured thirty-six feet long by four feet in extreme breadth, and is described in a contemporary newspaper as finely polished and perfectly smooth both inside and outside, formed from a single oak tree, with the usual pointed stem and square stern.[37] Mingling with such indisputable traces of human art, are deposited the memorials of many successive changes. Among older relics of the same Carse, in the Edinburgh Museum, are the remains of a fossil elephant found in excavating the Union Canal in 1821, at a depth of some twenty feet in the alluvial soil, with the ivory in such perfect preservation that it was purchased and cut up by a turner, and only rescued in fragments from his lathe.[38]
But at higher levels in the valley of the Forth, and further from the sea, still more remarkable evidences of the primitive occupants of the country have been found. The ingenious operations by which the Blair Drummond moss has been converted into fertile fields have rendered it famous in the annals of modern engineering and agriculture. In the Carse lands, of which it forms a part, there was discovered in the year 1819, at a distance of a mile from the river, and in an alluvial soil, covered with a thin moss, the surface of which stood some twenty-five feet above the full tide of the Forth, the skeleton of a whale, with a perforated lance or harpoon of deer's horn beside it. A few years later another whale was found, and in 1824 a third was disclosed on the Blair Drummond estate seven miles further inland, and overlaid with a thick bed of moss. Beside it also lay the rude harpoon of the hardy Caledonian whaler; in this instance retaining, owing to the preservative nature of the moss, some remains of the wooden handle by which the pointed lance of deer's horn was wielded.[39] This primitive relic is now deposited, along with the fossil remains of the whale, whose death-wound it may have given, in the Natural History Museum of the Edinburgh University. Professor Owen remarks, in referring to this class of fossils,—"Although these depositories belong to very recent periods in geology, the situations of the cetaceous fossils generally indicate a gain of dry land from the sea. Thus the skeleton of a balænoptera, seventy-two feet in length, found imbedded in clay on the banks of the Forth, was more than twenty feet above the reach of the highest tide. Several bones of a whale discovered at Dunmore rock, Stirlingshire, in brick-earth, were nearly forty feet above the present level of the sea.... I might add other instances of the discovery of cetaceous remains in positions to which, in the present condition of the dry land of England, the sea cannot reach; yet the soil in which these remains are imbedded is alluvial or amongst the most recent formation. In most cases the situation indicates the former existence there of an estuary that has been filled up by deposits of the present sea, or the bottom of which has been upheaved."[40] Other relics besides those of the whale and the implement of its hardy assailant, were recovered in the course of removing the Blair Drummond moss. In the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, a rude querne or hand-mill for pounding grain is preserved, fashioned from the section of an oak tree, which was found in 1831, at a depth of nearly five feet, in this moss. A wooden wheel of ingenious construction is also in the collection, which was dug up at more than double the depth of the querne, in the same locality, accompanied with several well-formed arrow-heads of flint. It measured when complete about two feet in diameter; but it is greatly decayed, having shrunk and cracked since its removal from the moss.[41]
Other relics, though belonging apparently to a later period, may be noticed along with these. In the progress of improvements on the Kincardine moss, the remains of a singular roadway were discovered, after the peat moss had been removed to a depth of eight feet. Seventy yards of the ancient viaduct were exposed to view, formed of trees about twelve inches in diameter, having other trees of half this thickness crossing them, and brushwood covering the whole. This road crossed the moss of Kincardine northward, from a narrow part of the Forth, towards a well-known line of Roman road which has been traced from a ford on the river Teith to Camelon, on the Antonine wall. This singular structure, though so unlike anything usually found on the line of the legionary iters, has been assigned, with great probability, to Roman workmanship, as it appears to be designed to keep up a communication with the well-known station at Ardoch. But if so, we have here evidence of the fact that in the second century of our era the Kincardine moss was an unstable and boggy waste, which the Roman engineer could only pass by abandoning his favourite and durable causeway, for such a road as modern ingenuity has revived in the backwood swamps of America.
Such are some of the ancient chronicles of Scotland garnered for us in the eastern valley of the Forth. The banks of the Clyde have been scarcely less liberal in their disclosures. In 1780, the first recorded discovery of one of the primitive canoes of the Clyde was made by workmen engaged in digging the foundation of Old St. Enoch's Church. It was found at a depth of twenty-five feet from the surface, and within it there lay a no less interesting and eloquent memorial of the simple arts of the remote era when the navies of the Clyde were hewn out of the oaks of the Caledonian forests. This is a beautifully-finished stone celt, represented in the woodcut—doubtless one of the simple implements of its owner, if not, indeed, one of the tools with which such vessels were fashioned into shape; though it is undoubtedly more adapted for war than for any peaceful art. It measures 5½ inches in length, by 3⅗ inches in greatest breadth; and is apparently formed of dark greenstone. It is now in the possession of Charles Wilsone Brown, Esq., of Wemyss, Renfrewshire, having descended to him from a maternal relative who chanced to be passing at the time of the discovery, and secured the curious relic.[42] The excavations of the following year brought a second canoe to light, at a higher level, and still further removed from the modern river's bed. Close to the site of Glasgow's ancient City Cross, and immediately adjoining what was once the Tolbooth of the burgh—more memorable from the fancied associations with which genius has endowed it, than for the stern realities of human misery which were its true attributes—there stands a quaint, but not inelegant building, adorned with an arcade curiously decorated with grim or grotesque masks on the keystone of each arch. It was erected on the site of older and less substantial tenements, in the year 1781; and in digging for a foundation for it, in a stratum of laminated clay that lies beneath a thick bed of sand, another primitive British canoe was discovered, hollowed as usual out of a single trunk of oak.[43] Another is noted to have been found about 1824, in Stockwell, near Jackson Street, while cutting the common sewer; and a fourth, at a much higher level, on the slope of Drygate Street, immediately behind the prison.[44] In 1825 a fifth canoe was discovered, scarcely an hundred yards from the site of the former at the City Cross, when digging the sewer of London Street—a new thoroughfare opened up by the demolition of ancient buildings long fallen to decay. This boat, which measured about eighteen feet in length, exhibited unusual evidences of labour and ingenuity. It was built of several pieces of oak, though without ribs. It lay, moreover, in a singular position, nearly vertical, and with its prow uppermost, as if it had foundered in a storm.
To these older instances recent and large additions have been made. The earlier discoveries seem to point to a period when the whole lower level on the north side of the river, where the chief trade and manufactures of Scotland are now transacted, was submerged beneath the sea. What follows affords similar evidence in relation to the southern bank of the Clyde. Extensive operations have been carrying on there for some years for the purpose of enlarging the harbour of Glasgow, and providing a range of quays on the grounds of Springfield, corresponding to those on the older Broomielaw. There, at a depth of seventeen feet below the surface, and about 130 feet from the river's original brink, the workmen uncovered an ancient canoe, hewn out of the trunk of an oak, with pointed stem, and the upright groove remaining which had formerly held in its place the straight stern. The discovery was made in the autumn of 1847; and the citizens of Glasgow having for the most part a reasonable conviction that boats lose their value in proportion to their age, the venerable relic lay for some months unheeded, until at length the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland made application for it to the Trustees of the River Clyde, and the rude precursor of the fleets that now crowd that noble river is safely deposited in their museum. Meanwhile the excavators proceeded with their labours, and in the following year another, and then a third canoe of primitive form, were disclosed on the southern bank of the Clyde. One of these, which has been since removed to the Hunterian Museum, measures 19⅓ feet long, by 3½ feet wide at the stern, 2 feet 9½ inches wide midway, and 30 inches deep. The prow is rather neatly formed with a small cut-water, near to which is an oblong hole, apparently for running a rope through to anchor or secure the vessel. There had been an outrigger, which was described by the workmen as adhering to it when first discovered, and the holes remain for receiving the pins by which it was fastened. About the centre are small rests inside the gunwale for the ends of a cross seat, and others for a broader seat are at the stern, both being projections formed by leaving the wood when the trunk was originally hollowed out into a boat. In this example the stern remains nearly in a perfect state. It consists of a board inserted in vertical grooves cut in each side, and received into a horizontal groove across, beyond which the bottom and sides project about eight inches. The other of these two canoes was chiefly remarkable for a circular hole in the bottom, stopped by a plug imbedded in very tenacious clay, evidently designed to admit of water shipped being run off when it was on shore. But the most curious, and indeed puzzling fact in regard to it, is that this plug is not of oak but of cork—a discovery suggestive of inquiries not easily answered satisfactorily.[45]
In the month of September 1849 a fourth canoe was found at Springfield, at a depth of about 20 feet from the surface, and in the same bed of finely laminated clay as those already described. This, too, is hollowed out of the single trunk of an oak, only thirteen feet in length, but on either side of it lay two additional planks of curious construction, each of them pierced with an elongated hole, which appeared to have been made with some sharp tool. They indicate some ingenious contrivance of the ancient seaman, not improbably designed for use when the bold navigator ventured with his tiny barque into the open sea, to be applied somewhat in the way a Dutch lugger fends off the dashing waves from her lee. This boat differs from those previously discovered, in having a rounded bow both fore and aft. In some respects it might seem to be the most ancient of the whole, and could hardly accommodate more than one man. Its workmanship is extremely rude, and it bears obvious marks of having been hollowed by fire. Yet the wooden appendages found alongside of it suffice to prove that its maker was not unprovided with some efficient tools. Thus, within a comparatively brief period, nine ancient canoes have been found within this limited area, affording singular evidence that in the earliest ages in which the presence of a human population is discoverable, we also find abundant proofs of the art of navigation, where now space fails to accommodate the merchant fleets of the Clyde. To these notices may be added the discovery of the remains of an ancient boat of more artificial construction, which was dug up, about the year 1830, at Castlemilk, Lanarkshire. It measured ten feet long, by two broad, and was built of oak, secured by large wooden pins.[46]
Nearly at the same time as the latest disclosures in the valley of the Clyde, workmen cutting a drain on the farm of Kinaven, Aberdeenshire, discovered another ancient boat of the same form as most of those previously described, and measuring eleven feet long, by nearly four broad. It is hewn out of the solid oak, with pointed stem, and at the stern a projection formed in the piece, and pierced with an eye, as if to attach a mooring cable. Like the Glasgow canoes, it is rudely finished, and exhibits the rough marks of the instrument with which it was reduced to shape. It lay imbedded in the moss, at a depth of five feet, at the head of a small ravine; and near it were found the stumps and roots of several large oaks. The nearest stream, the Ythan, is several miles off, and the sea is distant many more. A few years previous to this discovery, a similar canoe, of still smaller dimensions, was dug up in the moss of Drumduan, in the same county. It is described as quite entire, and neatly formed out of a single block of oak; but being left exposed, it was broken by the rude handling of some idle herd-boys.[47]
Such are a few examples of the aboriginal fleets of ancient Caledonia, found at different dates, and in various localities, yet agreeing wonderfully in every essential element of comparison. With them might also be noted the frequent discovery in bogs, or in alluvial strata, of trees felled by artificial means, and accompanied with relics of the most primitive arts. In 1830, for example, workmen engaged in constructing a sewer in Church Street, Inverness, found at a depth of fourteen feet below the surface, in a stratum of stiff blue clay, numerous large trunks of fossil oak; and along with these several deer's horns, one of which, bearing unmistakable marks of artificial cutting, is now deposited in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.[48] Here surely is common ground for the antiquary and the geologist. The rude harpoon left beside the bones of the stranded whale, far up in the alluvial valley of the Forth: the oaken querne, the wheel and the arrow-heads: the boats beneath the City Cross of Glasgow, the centre of a busy population for the last thousand years: the primitive ship, as we may almost term the huge canoe on the banks of the Carron: and the tiny craft just found near the waters of the Ythan—all speak, in no doubtful language, of the presence of a human population, at a period when the geographical features of the country, and the relative levels of land and sea, must have differed very remarkably from what we know of them at the earliest ascertained epoch of definite history. They point to a time within the historic era, when the ocean tides ebbed and flowed over the carse of Stirling, at a depth sufficient to admit of the gambols of the whale, where now a child might ford the brawling stream; and when the broad estuary of the Clyde flung its waves to the shore, not far from the high ground where the first cathedral of St. Mungo was founded, A.D. 560. These evidences of population, prior to the latest geological changes which have affected the surface of the country, are indeed all found on old historic ground, according to the reckonings of written chronicles. The first of them, in the south country, have been met with in localities where the traces of Roman invasion in the second century remain uneffaced. The carse of Falkirk is still indented with the vallum of the Antonine wall. Its modern church preserves the old tablet, which assigned to the ancient structure on its site a date coeval with the founding of Scottish monarchy under Malcolm Canmore; and the broad level ground, which has disclosed evidence of such remarkable changes, alike in natural features and in national arts and manners, was the battle-field of Wallace in the thirteenth century, as of Prince Charles Edward and the Highland clansmen in the eighteenth century. Trivet thus refers to the carse of Falkirk, in describing the invasion of Edward I., thereby affording curious evidence of its state at the former period,—"Causantibus majoribus loca palustria, propter brumalem intemperiem, immeabilia esse;" on which Lord Hailes remarks—"The meaning seems to be, that the English could not arrive at Stirling without passing through some of the carse grounds, and that they were impracticable for cavalry at that season of the year."[49] Nor are the historic associations of the broad carse which the Forth has intertwined with its silver links a whit behind those of the vale of Carron. There, in all probability, Agricola marshalled the Roman legions for his sixth campaign, and watched the mustering of the army of Galgacus on the heights beyond. The ever memorable field of Bannockburn adds a sacred interest to the same soil. There, too, are the scenes of James III.'s mysterious death on the field of Stirling, and of successive operations of Montrose, Cromwell, Mar, and Prince Charles. But the oldest of these events, long regarded as the beginnings of history, are modern occurrences, when placed alongside of such as we now refer to. Guiding his team across the "bloody field," as the scene of English slaughter is still termed, the ploughman turns up the craw-foot, the small Scottish horse-shoe, and the like tokens of the memorable day when Edward's chivalry was foiled by the Scottish host. Penetrating some few feet lower with his spade, he finds the evidences of former changes in the level of land and sea, but with them stumbles also on the relics of coeval population. Lower down he will reach the stratified rocks, including the carboniferous formation, stored no less abundantly with relics of former life and change, but no longer within the historic period, or pertaining to the legitimate investigations of archæological science, unless in so far as they confirm its previous inductions, and prove the slow but well defined progress of the more recent geological changes on the earth's surface. Such reflections are not suggested for the first time in our own day, nor will a shallow part satisfy those who have gone thus far. "Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties, which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great antiquity, America, lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto us."[50]
Some of these historic phenomena which are indicated above required only time to produce them. The beds of sand and loam at Springfield, in which the ancient fleets of the Clyde have lain entombed for ages, are such as the slow depositions of winter floods will for the most part account for, if the chronologist can only spare for them the requisite centuries. Others seem to point to geological changes within the historic era, of a more remarkable and extensive character. These it is not our province to explain. Whether the geologist find it most consistent with the established laws of his science to assume the standing of the whole ocean at higher levels within so recent a period, or adopt the more probable theory of local upheaval and denudation to account for these phenomena, this at least must be conceded, that the lapse of many ages is required for the changes which they indicate, and we can hardly err in inferring that civilisation had advanced but a little way on the plain of Nimroud, or the banks of the Nile, when the tiny fleets of the Clyde were navigating its estuary, and the hardy fishermen were following the whale in the winding creeks of the Forth.