Page:Submerged forests (1913).djvu/83

VI] in all probability for a long time the Strait was only a narrow one, over which animals could easily swim. Then tidal scour, deeper submergence, and the action of the waves did the rest, so that ever since that time the Strait of Dover has been getting steadily wider and wider, and also deeper. Its bottom is to a large extent composed of bare chalk with patches of gravel; and the movement of this gravel during storms, combined with the action of boring molluscs must slowly eat away the chalk far below ordinary wave-action.

The above explanation is needed, for it will not do to take existing soundings, and say that all the sea-bottom below a certain level, corresponding with a particular submerged forest, was then sea and all above was then land. This is an easy way of reconstructing the physical geography; but it may be a very misleading one. A little consideration will show that whilst in large areas sandbanks have accumulated to a great thickness, in other areas, of which we know the Strait of Dover is one and the Dogger Bank a second, there has been much submarine erosion, which is still going on. In neither case is it safe entirely to reconstruct the ancient contours from the present-day soundings.

Even such a gigantic feature as the continental platform, which ceases suddenly at a depth of 100 fathoms, is in all probability in the main a feature formed by the deposition of sediment during