quently, we have discoveries and circumstances brought to light which give a great deal of colour and support to the popular belief of the ancient Caledonian forest, and the close unbroken wood that of old covered Scotland. The most interesting and the best described of these is a late discovery of a buried forest of great oaks found at the mouth of the Cree, in Galloway, which Dr. Arthur Mitchell has carefully examined and noted for us. Dr. Mitchell is a most accurate observer, and scrupulously careful in the statements of his facts. Let me read a few lines of his description:

"Below Newton-Stewart the crooks of the Cree are compared to those of the Forth between Stirling and Alloa. From this point the river pursues a winding course, through a flat or plain, which has been aptly likened to the Carse of Stirling. This carse, which lies between the road to Creetown on the one side, and the road to Wigtown on the other, covers an area of 10 to 12 square miles, including the part under water at full tide, and consists throughout of bluish clay silt, clayey loam, or carse clay. On the west side a large extent is still covered by peat, averaging 7 to 8 feet in depth. On the east side, indeed, little peat now remains, and the next generation may see nearly as little on the west. The peat lies immediately over the clay, the line of separation being sharp and defined, there being no evidence of any vegetation prior to the formation of the peat.

"The clay bank, or bed of clay which forms the carse is of great but unknown depth. About two miles below Newton-Stewart, in making a bridge for the railway in 1860, piles were driven more than 40 feet down and no bottom found.

"The trees, which, so far as I know, are all oak, are found in two distinct positions: first, in the channel of the Cree, or projecting into its channel from the banks at the side, with 10 or 15 feet of sandy clay above, and an unknown number of feet of clay below; and, secondly, under the peat on the surface of the clay.

"The existence of this ancient Cree forest does not rest on our finding some half dozen trunks; you may count them by the hundred, exposed in the bed of the river between Newton and Barsalloch, and you may reckon roots by the score where the moss has been cleared away near the mouth of Lime Burn. The pillars of nearly every gate on the way are observed to be made of handsome logs of black oak. "Not only is the wood abundant, but it is of great size.

"Mr. M'Culloch, of Barholm, about twenty years ago raised an oak from the bed of the Cree which was 15 feet in girth and 50 feet long, and which he sold for £25 to Mr. Younghusband, of Whitehaven, to be used in shipbuilding.

"The Rev. Dr. Richardson gives the measurement of two logs raised

by a cabinetmaker in Newton-Stewart. One was 58 feet long and 14 feet 9 inches in girth, and the other 35 feet long and no less than 17 feet in girth; and the same authority adds that 'numbers of them were 12 feet in circumference.'

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Dr. Black, F.G.S., in a note sent to me by Mr. Innes, states that the growth rings of one 'were reckoned up to about 600;' and I found a cabinetmaker in Newton-Stewart making large panels of an oak said to have been 15 feet in circumference, and which was found in Kirrochtree Moss, in what appeared to be a mixture of clay and peat, at a depth of 8 or 9 feet.

"In 1814, in the moss of Barnkirk, close to Newton-Stewart, a canoe was found made out of a single log of oak. Mr. M'Millan, who then occupied Barnkirk, made the lintel of a cart-shed door out of it. Above the canoe in the peat, 6 feet below the surface, a bale of tallow or fat (adipocere) was found, weighing 27 lbs.

"In 1819, Mr. Newall found in the clay which adhered to the end of a tree buried in the bank of the river, with at least 12 feet of clay above it, a horn 34 inches long and 12 inches round immediately below its division into 5 antlers. This was sent by Mr. Joseph Train to Sir Walter Scott, and was examined by Barclay and pronounced to be the horn of a deer' of the largest possible size.'

"Several heads of the extinct urus are said to have been found in the moss and bed of the Cree. Mr. Stewart, of Cairnsmuir, has one which is tolerably perfect. The horns are 29 inches long, and 14 inches in circumference at the root, with a frontal space of 10 inches between them. The same gentleman has also the fragment of another. "It thus appears that very interesting remains are found in close association with the vestiges of Cree forest. The country appears to have been peopled when these trees were living. On the margins of this forest man paddled in his canoe, and under the shade of these mighty trees he pursued the red deer and the urus. He cultivated corn in the neighbourhood, and ground it. He was of goodly stature, and carried formidable weapons of war. These things at least are possible, if not probable inferences from the facts I have detailed."

And let me also read his conclusions:"Where wood thrives well now, wood throve well in ancient Scotland, and vice versa, woodless districts now, were woodless then; that there were many large tracts of low natural wood; that here and there something like a forest existed, with trees of a size which we seldom see equalled now; and that there is reason to believe that Scotland never had a much larger acreage under wood than it has at present."

It is not only in searching out and describing such remains that our rural friends can help us, and find infinite pleasure for them

selves in the occupation. In many country families there are records more or less old of planting and wood culture, which would be most interesting and valuable if given to the public. Many of you are acquainted with the account published by Lord Haddington of his planting of that noble wood of Tyninghame, when all men laughed at his attempt. The north country has a similar chapter of forestry, as interesting, though not so detailed. On a beautiful haugh of the Don, close beside the old Culdee Monastery of Monymusk, the Grants of Monymusk detected the fitness of the soil, and made a "Paradise" (as they called it) there, where they planted with other trees all the conifers then known in Scotland, and they have all thriven; insomuch that the late Lord Forbes told me he had measured the larches there and found them larger than those at Dunkeld. Well, of that planting we have an account preserved. It is even now valuable, and in a few years it will be more valuable as the only record of "Paradise," when all the trees it records are dead and gone like their neighbours the Culdees.

There are other families who have noted down their operations in planting and forest culture, and whose descendants have not yet given the world the benefit of these notes of ancestral experience. One gentleman of my acquaintance has very precise records of planting by his grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, taking him back to the period before the Revolution of 1688 and the introduction of beech in our Scotch woods. On the eastern side of the country beech was first planted in some quantity at Yester (Lord Tweeddale's), and at Panmure, the seat of the noble family of Maule in Angus. The gentleman to whom I allude finds it recorded of his remote ancestor, that he brought the first plants of beech from Lord Tweeddale's in a portmanteau or valise, behind his servant's saddle; and those trees are still extant, by no means however, the finest of the wood. That gentleman has the happiness to live under the shade of his ancestral trees, which no doubt he enjoys the more from knowing their history. Some of the tallest larches we have in Scotland are there, and a noble silver-fir, though shattered by the storms of centuries, still overtopping all the wood-the landmark of the valley. I hope the gentleman I allude to will be prevailed upon to publish the memoirs of that very interesting woodland tract; and there are many others who have similar records of the wood-culture of generations, the publication of which would be very useful to their neighbours and the country.

We know, too, of some mosses in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire, and no doubt elsewhere, containing logs and remains of oak of good size. One tree dug out of the Cart has been set up in the garden at Poloc. It is of great dimensions, hollow from age before it fell. The gardener assured me that twenty people (I may not be correct in the number, for I speak from memory, but it is easy to ascertain) could sit within the trunk. I wish the gentlemen of that country would give us a detailed account of those forests under the mosses. We hear every now and then of single trees of enormous size, but the actual measurement is not given. They speak, too, of great numbers, but that is too indefinite. I do not mean that they should count the trees in the moss, that might be difficult, but let them at least imitate Dr. Arthur Mitchell, and give us some idea of the extent-in yards or in miles--over which the trees have been found. But above all give us accurate mensuration, for a fallen tree, or the root from which a tree has been cut, seems larger than the tree when alive.

I hear of some remarkable remains of this nature in Loch Doon, and it would be very desirable to have the facts precisely ascertained.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

NO. XXIII.

ON THE GEOLOGICAL BEARINGS OF THE QUESTION AS TO THE ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN RACE:

BY

JAMES SMITH, Esq.

[Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 15th February, 1864.]

My present purpose regards a question which it is the object of archæology not less than geology to elucidate, namely, How long has man been an inhabitant of this world? Hitherto, in that voluminous history of the earth which geology unfolds, that of the human race has been supposed to occupy not more than the last chapter of the last volume, or, rather, the last page of the last chapter. Has this portion of geological history been extended by the late researches into the antiquity of the human race, and what is the extent?

Now I think that there is little doubt but that to a certain extent it has, that we can synchronise the human race with the remains of animals that are now unknown to exist, and which we may safely conclude are extinct; this, however, proves no more than that the period of their extinction is less remote than has hitherto been supposed, but throws no additional light on the absolute lapse of time which has intervened between the creation of man and the historic period. One of these extinct species, the Irish elk, we have every reason to believe was co-existent with man; another, the dodo, we know existed within the last four centuries. In Great Britain, the bear, the wolf, the beaver, and bustard have become extinct during the human period, and other species are to all appearance wearing out; and in any case, however remote the period when the elk and other animals which we have reason to suppose lived during the human period existed, they all belong to the most modern geological epoch. We must also remember that geological changes, such as those I am about to mention, necessarily produce geographical changes which must influence the fauna of the countries which have been subjected