With such indications of the remoteness of the era of the Drift-Folk it scarcely calls for special notice, that their tools correspond to some of those found in cave-deposits, as in Kent’s Hole, Devonshire; but that they are readily distinguishable from the smaller implements and weapons of the same material wrought by the primitive Barrow-Builders of Europe, or by modern savage tribes still ignorant of metallurgy. From whatever point we attempt to view the facts thus presented to our consideration, it becomes equally obvious that we are dealing with the traces of a period irreconcilable with any received system of historic chronology; but within which, nevertheless, we are compelled to recognise many indications of the presence of man. By evidence of a like character, the intermediate but still remote periods of prehistoric centuries are peopled with successive races of men. Proofs of oscillation, upheaval, and derangement of the course of ancient rivers, had furnished indications of the enormous lapse of time embraced within the British stone-period before the discoveries of Abbeville and Amiens were heard of.[16] In the year 1819 there was disclosed in the alluvium of the carse-land, where the river Forth winds its circuitous course through ancient historic scenes, the skeleton of a gigantic whale, with a perforated lance or harpoon of deer’s-horn beside it. They lay together near the base of Dunmyat, one of the Ochil Hills, twenty feet above the highest tide of the neighbouring estuary. Over this an accumulation of five feet of alluvial soil was covered with a thin bed of moss. The locality was examined by scientific observers peculiarly competent to the task; and at the same time sufficient traces of the old Roman causeway were observed, leading to one of the fords of the Forth, to prove that no important change had taken place on the bed of the river, or the general features of the strath, during the era of authentic history.[17] Nor was this example a solitary one. Remains of gigantic Balænæ have been repeatedly found; and one skeleton discovered in 1824, seven miles further inland, was deposited in the Museum of Edinburgh University, along with the primitive harpoon of deer’s-horn found beside it, which in this instance retained some portion of the wooden shaft by which it had been wielded. Among antique spoils recovered at various depths in the same carse-land, the collection of the Scottish Antiquaries includes a primitive quern, or hand-mill, fashioned from the section of an oak,—such as is still in use by the Indians of America for pounding their grain,—and a wooden wheel of ingenious construction, found with several flint arrow-heads alongside of it.