practically obliterated by a submergence of the land of South Britain and the opposite coast of Brittany.
But this submergence ought not to be confounded with the extensive subsidence which commenced during the glacial epoch and embraced the whole of Western Europe. That with which we have now to deal was comparatively recent, and probably contemporary with the opposite movement which caused the last raised beaches in Scotland. It was a wave-like undulation which upheaved the north and depressed the south of Britain. At any rate there can be no doubt that a submergence of the land has taken place in the south of England since man inhabited it in proto-Neolithic times. The evidence in support of this statement consists of submerged forests and old inhabited land-surfaces, associated with edible shells, and bones of the stag, hog, horse and Bos longifrons, together with rude implements of horn and flint, which are occasionally to be seen at low-water mark in many localities. Such remains have been incidentally described on the coast of Somerset, at Barnstaple in North Devon, at Torbay, St. Bride's Bay, the coasts of Cheshire, Lancashire and Hampshire, the valley of the Thames, and along the shores of Essex and east coast as far north as Holderness. Many of these vanishing landmarks on the eastern shores of England may, however, be accounted for by sea-erosion.
The information obtained from the short
