Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/133

Rh "(1) A deposit of blown sand and recent alluvium from 4 feet to 6 feet thick.

"(2) A bed of brown sandy and clayey peat (with relics of Gallo-Roman times).

"(3) A marine deposit consisting of clay, shingle and shell gravel from 2 feet to 5 feet thick.

"(4) A bed of firm black peat and forest remains which ranges from 5 feet to 14 feet in thickness.

"This peat and forest-bed is traceable to the shore, where it forms the well-known 'submerged forest,' thence (as revealed by the dredge) across the channel that separates the island from the continental coast from Cape La Hague to Finisterre.

"This no doubt is all one with the post-glacial submerged forests of the British Isles and North-western Europe in general, for all through the flora and fauna are the same, viz. oak, alder, birch, hazel, Juncus and Equisetum with hazel nuts in profusion. Bos longifrons, red-deer and wolf, even elytra of the little purplish-green beetle, Geotropes vernalis, are present in this layer beneath St. Helier, as they are from extreme north to south throughout the vast forest area.

"Neolithic relics, in the way of stone implements and fragments of pottery, are very plentiful on the surface and in the upper levels of this forest-bed, but, so far as I can ascertain, have never been recorded from the strata beneath. In a series of excavations