Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/138

84 Mr Pengelly, while describing the well-known submerged forest in Torbay, makes the following remarks:—

"Similar and coeval forests are well known to exist on the opposite shores of all the British seas and channels. They everywhere present the same phenomena, among which may be specially mentioned large vertical stumps of trees, having roots and rootlets ramifying to considerable distances through the clay. They have been described by a large number of observers, and it may be safely concluded that they are the remains of forests in situ, carried to their present level by a general, uniform, and tranquil subsidence of the British Archipelago, and of, at least, Western Europe. 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 such 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 12 feet below the surface." (Transactions of the Devonshire Association, etc., 1867.)

Hoxne Brick-earth.

Perhaps the most conclusive evidence of the relation of the works of Palæolithic Man to the glacial period is that of the committee appointed by the British Association, in 1895, to ascertain the relation between the implement-bearing brick-earth at Hoxne and the neighbouring boulder clay. The investigations were carried out by sinking pits and borings across the ancient silted-up channel of what was a small tributary stream, now represented by the brick-earth deposits at Hoxne, of which descriptive plans and sections are given in the committee's report for 1896 (Liverpool Meeting, p. 400). The following precise statement, quoted from the committee's concluding remarks, will suffice for our present purpose:—

"It is true that the evidence is now perfectly clear that the well-known Palæolithic implements of Hoxne are much later than the Boulder Clay of that district. … It is possible that in other districts man may be interglacial or pre-glacial, but on this question the Hoxne excavations throw no light : they only show that a race of men using implements of the Hoxne type certainly inhabited Suffolk long after the latest glaciation of that district. Whether precisely the same form of implement is likely to have been in use in Britain in both preglacial and post-glacial times is a question into which we need not enter."