II.—The Raised Beach of Cantyre

Extract

Amongst the many objects of interest to the naturalist in that remarkable limb of the Western Highlands, variously written “Cantyre,” “Cantire,” or “Kintire,” are the raised beach and seaworn rocks which may be traced all along the coast under varying forms and aspects. This beach is the same as that which has been described by various writers as skirting the coast of Scotland from the Roman Wall northward, and winding through the innumerable fiords and sea-locks of the Firth of Clyde and the western coast; and to which attention was first called, I think, by Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, in 1836 and 1838, in papers read before the Geological and Wernerian Societies, and with other memoirs condensed into a small volume, in 1862. It is the last and by far the most strongly pronounced of all the raised beaches of Scotland—of which there are several—and is very graphically described by Mr. Geikie in his recent work. Now it is worthy of remark, that each of these authors draws opposite conclusions regarding the age of this raised beach from the same evidence; for Mr. Smith, of Jordanhill, considers the beach to be more ancient than the Roman period, and Mr. Geikie, on the contrary, more recent, both appealing to the position of the Roman Wall at its termination on the western and eastern coasts as evidence of the correctness of their views.