high ground where the first cathedral of St. Mungo was founded, A.D. 560. These evidences of population, prior to the latest geological changes which have affected the surface of the country, are indeed all found on old historic ground, according to the reckonings of written chronicles. The first of them, in the south country, have been met with in localities where the traces of Roman invasion in the second century remain uneffaced. The carse of Falkirk is still indented with the vallum of the Antonine wall. Its modern church preserves the old tablet, which assigned to the ancient structure on its site a date coeval with the founding of Scottish monarchy under Malcolm Canmore; and the broad level ground, which has disclosed evidence of such remarkable changes, alike in natural features and in national arts and manners, was the battle-field of Wallace in the thirteenth century, as of Prince Charles Edward and the Highland clansmen in the eighteenth century. Trivet thus refers to the carse of Falkirk, in describing the invasion of Edward I., thereby affording curious evidence of its state at the former period,--"Causantibus majoribus _loca palustria_, propter brumalem intemperiem, immeabilia esse;" on which Lord Hailes remarks--"The meaning seems to be, that the English could not arrive at Stirling without passing through some of the carse grounds, and that they were impracticable for cavalry at that season of the year."[49] Nor are the historic associations of the broad carse which the Forth has intertwined with its silver links a whit behind those of the vale of Carron. There, in all probability, Agricola marshalled the Roman legions for his sixth campaign, and watched the mustering of the army of Galgacus on the heights beyond. The ever memorable field of Bannockburn adds a sacred interest to the same soil. There, too, are the scenes of James III.'s mysterious death on the field of Stirling, and of successive operations of Montrose, Cromwell, Mar, and Prince Charles. But the oldest of these events, long regarded as the beginnings of history, are modern occurrences, when placed alongside of such as we now refer to. Guiding his team across the "bloody field," as the scene of English slaughter is still termed, the ploughman turns up the craw-foot, the small Scottish horse-shoe, and the like tokens of the memorable day when Edward's chivalry was foiled by the Scottish host. Penetrating some few feet lower with his spade, he finds the evidences of former changes in the level of land and sea, but with them stumbles also on the relics of coeval population. Lower down he will reach the stratified rocks, including the carboniferous formation, stored no less abundantly with relics of former life and change, but no longer within the historic period, or pertaining to the legitimate investigations of archæological science, unless in so far as they confirm its previous inductions, and prove the slow but well defined