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.
|| Edin. New Phil. Journ. N.S, vol. vi. p. 105 ; Trans. Geol. Soc, Glasgow, vol. i. part ii. p. 71.
¶ Geological Magazine, vol. v. pp. 393, 486, 535.
- Journ. Geol. Soc. Dublin, Feb. 10th, 1864, vol. x. p. 103.
