We also seem to have a test of the comparatively modern origin of the mounds of till which surround the above-mentioned chain of lakes (of which that of Forfar is one), in the species of organic remains contained in the shell-marl deposited at their bottom. All the mammalia as well as shells are of recent species. Unfortunately, we have no information as to the fauna which inhabited the country at the time when the till itself was formed. There seem to be only three or four instances as yet known in all Scotland of mammalia having been discovered in boulder clay.
Mr. R. Bald has recorded the circumstances under which a single elephant's tusk was found in the unstratified drift of the valley of the Forth, with the minuteness which such a discovery from its rarity well deserved. He distinguishes the boulder clay, under the name of "the old alluvial cover," from that more modern alluvium, in which the whales of Airthrie, described in Chapter 3, were found. This cover he says is sometimes 160 feet thick. Having never observed any organic remains in it, he watched with curiosity and care the digging of the Union Canal between Edinburgh and Falkirk, which passed for no less than 28 miles almost continuously through it. Mr. Baird, the engineer who superintended the works, assisted in the inquiry, and at one place only in this long section did they meet with a fossil, namely, at Cliftonhall, in the valley of the Almond. It lay at a depth of between 15 and 20 feet from the surface, in very stiff clay, and consisted of an elephant's tusk, 39 inches long and 13 in circumference, in so fresh a state that an ivory turner purchased it and turned part of it into chessmen before it was rescued from destruction. The remainder is still preserved in the museum at Edinburgh, but by exposure to the air it has shrunk considerably.*
(* "Memoirs of the Wernerian Society" Edinburgh volume 4
page 58.)
In 1817, two other tusks and some bones of the elephant, as we learn from the same authority (Mr. Bald), were met with, 3 1/2 feet long and 13 inches in circumference, lying in an horizontal position, 17 feet deep in clay, with marine shells, at Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire. The species of shells are not given.*
(* Ibid. volume 4 page 63.)
In another excavation through the Scotch boulder clay, made in digging the Clyde and Forth Junction Railway, the antlers of a reindeer were found at Croftamie, in Dumbartonshire, in the basin of the river Endrick, which flows into Loch Lomond. They had cut through 12 feet of till with angular and rounded stones, some of large size, and then through 6 feet of underlying clay, when they came upon the deer's horns, 18 feet from the surface, and within a foot of the sandstone on which the till rested. At the distance of a few yards, and in the same position, but a foot or two deeper, were observed marine shells, Cyprina islandica, Astarte elliptica, A. compressa, Fusus antiquus, Littorina littorea, and a Balanus. The height above the level of the sea was between 100 and 103 feet. The reindeer's horn was seen by Professor Owen, who considered it to be that of a young female of the large variety, called by the Hudson's Bay trappers the caribou.
The remains of elephants, now in the museums of Glasgow and Edinburgh, purporting to come from the superficial deposits of Scotland have been referred to Elephas primigenius. In cases where tusks alone have been found unaccompanied by molar teeth, such specific determinations may be uncertain; but if any one specimen be correctly named, the occurrence of the mammoth and reindeer in the Scotch boulder-clay, as both these quadrupeds are known to have been contemporary with Man, favours the idea which I have already expressed, that the close of the glacial period in the Grampians may have coincided in time with the existence of Man in those parts of Europe where the climate was less severe, as, for example, in the basins of the Thames, Somme, and Seine, in which the bones of many extinct mammalia are associated with flint implements of the antique type.
PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY IN SCOTLAND. [ [!-- IMG --]
(PLATE 2. VIEW OF THE MOUTHS OF GLEN ROY AND GLEN SPEAN,
BY SIR T. DICK LAUDER.
VV. Hill of Bohuntine.
VVV. Glen Roy.
V(inverted)V. Mealderry.
V. Entrance of Glen Spean
VV(superscript)V. Point of division between Glens Roy
and Spean.)