Gray's Inn Lane, apparently alongside of the entire skeleton of a fossil elephant, has lain unheeded for upwards of a century in the British Museum;1 and so early as 1797, a similar discovery in the stratified gravel at Hoxne, in Suffolk, was communicated to the London Antiquaries, and specimens of the implements deposited in the Society's collection. The testimony on which those important discoveries rest has been confirmed by the observations of the most eminent English and French geologists; and thus places before us evidence of the presence of man in the north of Europe at a period compared with which the Roman era is but as yesterday. No such post-pliocene flint implements have yet been discovered in Scotland, and it is even doubtful if they may be looked for. In the comprehensive scheme of interpretation by means of which science grapples with such startling phenomena, it seems not improbable that in the glacial period of northern Europe, the Grampians may have formed a lofty chain of Arctic Alps, from the icy glaciers of which the drift was borne southward, until in southern England it embedded the traces of man's presence on the verge of what then seemed the eternal polar ice. Such interpretations of recent disclosures naturally startle the mind, conflicting as they do with so many preconceived opinions; but the analogous evidence long since produced in the lances or harpoons, and other traces of human art, found alongside the buried whales of the carse of Stirling, if it indicate a later era than that of the Drift-folk of Abbeville and Hoxne, practically involves the same perplexing evidence of an antiquity for man which sets at defiance all previously received systems of chronology.

But leaving those oldest chapters of the prehistoric chronicle; other indications of the presence of man at 1 Archæologia, vol. xxxviii. p. 301.

2 Ibid. vol. xiii. p. 204.

a later period, but still in a condition of primitive rudeness, meet the inquirer wherever the newer superficial formations are laid open. In the In the progress of improvements on the Kincardine moss, 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 branches 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 had a Roman origin assigned to it, as a work designed to keep up communication with the well-known station at Ardoch. But the length of time required for so great a growth of peat has yet to be determined. If it does indeed belong to the Roman period, 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 twentyfive feet from the surface, and within it 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 oaks of the Caledonian forests. This was 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. It measures 5 inches in length, by 33 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.1 The excavations of the following year brought a second canoe to light, at a higher level, and still farther 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. Another is noted to have been

1 For access to this interesting relic, as well as for much other valuable information, I am indebted to John Buchanan, Esq., of Glasgow.

2 Chapman's Picture of Glasgow, 1818, p. 152.

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. In 1825, a fifth canoe was discovered, scarcely a 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.

the sea.

To those older instances, recent and large additions have been made. The earlier discoveries 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 What follows affords similar evidence in relation to the southern bank of the Clyde. Extensive operations were carried on 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 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

1 Chambers's Ancient Sea Margins, pp. 203-209.

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 its 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 19 feet long, by 3 feet wide at the stern, 2 feet 9 inches wide midway, and 30 inches deep. The prow is rather neatly formed with a small cutwater, near to which is an oblong hole, apparently for running a rope through to anchor or secure the vessel. There had been an outrigger, 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. The stern remains nearly in a perfect state, consisting of a board inserted in grooves, beyond which the bottom and sides project about eight inches. The other canoe was chiefly remarkable for a circular hole in the bottom, stopped by a plug embedded in very tenacious clay, evidently designed to admit of the water it had shipped being run off when on shore. But the most curious, and indeed puzzling feature is that this plug is not of oak but of cork: a discovery suggestive of intercourse with the Iberian peninsula, or perhaps serving to indicate the route pursued by some of the early colonists of the British Isles.1

1 MS. Letters of J. Buchanan, Esq.