Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 25.djvu/302

208 Kilmaurs in Ayrshire *, in a deposit of sand and clay, which has been proved by Mr. Bryce to underlie the till. Antlers of Reindeer have also been obtained from the same stratum, and are now deposited in the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow. The remarkable fact that these two animals were derived from beds underneath the till does not imply that Scotland has been submerged since they lived in that country ; for it is very probable, as Mr. Geikie† has shown, that the till in some places is the result of the melting of land-ice, and not of icebergs floating on the sea. The second instance on record is that of the Mammoth from the Union Canal, between Edinburgh and Falkirk‡. A tusk was found at Clifton Hall in the stiff boulder-clay, 15 or 20 feet from the surface, in such preservation that it was sold to an ivory-turner for £2. Before it was rescued by Sir Gibson Maitland it had been sawn asunder for the manufacture of chessmen. The third locality is that of Chapel Hall§, near Airdrie, in Dumbartonshire, where a bone of the Mammoth was obtained from a deposit underlying the till, at a height of 350 feet above the sea. Mr. Geikie assigns the Reindeer -antler found in a cutting of the Forth and Clyde Junction Railway, in the parish of Kilmarnock||, to the period of the till. It was obtained from a bed of blue clay, at a height of about 100 feet above the sea. Mr. James Geikie has also described the occurrence of a skull of Urus in a lacustrine deposit intercalated in the boulder-drift at Croftshead, Renfrewshire¶.

With the exception of these five cases, I know of no evidence that Postglacial mammals ever existed in Scotland. The remains of other animals, such as Urus, Reddeer, and the like, have been obtained from marl-beds underlying the peat or from alluvia, which are Prehistoric and not Postglacial.

In Ireland** there are two localities only that have furnished remains of indisputably Postglacial age. Four teeth of the Mammoth were found, in digging the foundations of a house, at Maghery, near Belturbet, in Cavan. In the south, a cave near Dungarvan has furnished the remains of Ursus (U. speloeus? U. arctos?), Mammoth, and Reindeer. A tusk of Hippopotamus, which I have been unable to trace, is also quoted, by Mr. Scott, from the boulder-clay of Carrickfergus ; but the account of its discovery is not circumstantial.

Thus there is evidence that, for some reason or other, the Postglacial mammals, so abundant in England, were extremely rare both in Scotland and Ireland.

§ 8. Cause of unequal distribution. — What adequate cause, then, can be assigned for the unequal distribution of the mammals in the


 * Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. iv. p. 64.

† Trans. Greol. Soc. Glasgow, vol. i. part ii. p. 70 ; Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxi. p. 213.

‡ Mem. Wern. Soc. vol. iv. p. 58.

§ Proc. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. p. 415. See Bryce, Geol. Arran, p. 9.

vol. i. part ii. p. 71.
 * Edin. New Phil. Journ. N.S, vol. vi. p. 105 ; Trans. Geol. Soc, Glasgow,

¶ Geological Magazine, vol. v. pp. 393, 486, 535.


 * Journ. Geol. Soc. Dublin, Feb. 10th, 1864, vol. x. p. 103.