Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/132

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124
PREHISTORIC BRITAIN

intermittent excavations which are possible within the limits of tidal areas has been supplemented by various industrial operations, such as dock-excavations, submarine tunnelling, borings, etc., which have disclosed former land-surfaces some fifty or sixty feet below present sea-level.

The following extract from Mr. Pengelly's paper, "On the Submerged Forest of Torbay," gives a good idea of this class of evidence: "Similar and coeval forests are well known to exist on the opposite shores of all the British seas and channels. . . . Everywhere the change of level appears to be the same, the stumps in situ are always vertical, and the roots have the same relation to the horizontal plain as they must have had when growing. Mixed with the vegetable remains, which are those of species of plants and trees as still exist in the neighbourhood, there have been found the bones of the mammoth, Bos longifrons, red-deer, horse and wild-hog. In the Torbay forest a human implement made of the antler of the red-deer was found twelve feet below the surface."

From a recent correspondence which appeared in Nature I take the following extracts, which strongly support the above views on the submergence question. Mr. J. Sinel, of Jersey, thus describes excavations in St. Helier (September 19, 1912):

"The soil beneath the town of St. Helier is, in descending order, composed as follows: