The marine mammals in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh / by Sir Wm. Turner.

  • Turner, Wm. (William), Sir, 1832-1916.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The marine mammals in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh / by Sir Wm. Turner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    above tlie level of high water. The skull appeared to be in the same bed as that in which the bones were found in 1863, and the bed belonged to his group of forty-feet Beach Beds, iu which layers of peat occur, and numerous organic remains, including those of horses and whales, have been found {Trans. GeoL Soc. Glasgoio, vol. x., 1896). In 1823 Sir G. S. Mackenzie of Coul communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh {Transactions, vol. x.) an account of the vertebra of a whale exposed in a bed of bluish clay near Dingwall, in Ross-shire, in a raised beach about three miles from the sea and about 12 feet above high-water mark. No attempt apparently was made to discriminate the species of whale to which the vertebra belonged. The part of Scotland which has given the most abundant evidence of the presence of skeletons of whales in raised sea-beaches is the valley of the Forth, more especially in the precincts of Stirling. The recorded examples have been summarised from time to time by the Rev. Charles Rogers in his guide-book to the Bridge of Allan, by Mr David Milne Home in his Ancient Water-Lines in Scotland (1882), and recently and more fully by Mr David B. Morris, in The Raised Beaches of the Forth Valley (1892, reprinted 1901). iMr Morris has collected not fewer than fourteen records of bones of whales exposed in the fifty-feet raised beach bordering the river Forth and the upper end of the Estuary. They were imbedded in the Carse blue clay subjacent to the soil now worked in agriculture, and were met with either in making roads or drains, or in digging the clay for the manufacture of bricks. The clay frequently contains shells of various species of molluscs, foraminifera, etc., now inhabiting the adjoining sea, and the whales’ bones usually occur from 20 to 30 feet above the present high-water level. The earliest and most complete discovery was at Airthrey, near Stirling, in July 1819, of the skeleton of a whale, the length of which was roughly estimated at about 72 feet. The bones were lying in blue silt at a depth of between 4 and 5 feet from the surface of the ground, and 24 feet above high-water level of the river Forth. An account of the discovery was given in the Edin- burgh Philosophical Journal, vol. i., by Mr Robert Bald. In a letter in my possession, written on 20th August 1819 by Mr Bald to the Rev. Dr Baird, the Principal of the University, it is stated that on the previous day the bones were dispatched by steamer to be deposited in the University as most interesting specimens of natural history. The letter contained an inventory of the bones, as follows: head bone, jaw bones, forty vertebrae, thirteen ribs, one shoulder-blade, swimming paws, various broken bones, an ear bone, deer horns, one of which was stated in i\Ir Bald’s paper in the Philosophical Journal to have been perforated. The bones were placed in the Natural llistoiy ]\Iuseum, then under the charge of Professor Rt. -lameson, which was transferred in 1856 to the Science and Art Deparnient, and formed the nucleus of the Natural History Collection in the Museum, now known as the Royal Scottish Museum.