Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/279

] clay and the marine silt, at a time not later than that marked by the layer of peat or vegetable soil in which the prostrate trees are imbedded.

These submerged forests are mere scraps, spared by the waves, of an ancient growth of oak, ash, and yew, extending in Somersetshire underneath the peat and alluvium, and joining the great morasses of Glastonbury, Sedgemoor, and Athelney; in which Neolithic implements have been met with by Mr. Stradling. The discovery of flint-flakes and an old refuse-heap with mammalian remains by Mr. Ellis, in the submerged forest of Barnstaple, affords the same kind of evidence that man was living in Devonshire while the land stood considerably higher than it does at the present time. The bones of Celtic short-horn (Bos longifrons), stag, sheep, and goat, had evidently been accumulated around the piles before they were in their present position between high and low water mark, since such an accumulation would have been impossible in a spot between tides. In all probability the piles were driven into a peaty morass on the land surface.

Conclusive proof of submergence within comparatively modern times is brought forward by Mr. Pengelly in his paper "On the Submerged Forest of Torbay." The forest consists of a layer of peat, sometimes ten feet thick, which sweeps upwards from low-water mark to the higher grounds, the subaërial portion being covered with three feet of loam. From it have been obtained the stag, hog, horse, and Celtic short-horn, and antlers of stag cut by man. Here, therefore, as well as in North Devon and Somersetshire, man was in possession of the