208 Dana and Chambers on Ancient Sea-Margins. 



"between Weston-super-Mare and Bridge water, and to the broad expanse 

 of low land in Lincolnshire and other parts of eastern England. The 

 carses along the Forth and Taj, vast alluvial plains, the low gravelly 

 lands of Moray, and the alluvial grounds skirting the Clyde near Glas- 

 gow, are examples of equally signal character in the northern part of the 

 island. 



" It may, I believe, be safely said, that a sea 44 feet above the present 

 would cover the whole of the districts referred to, excepting, perhaps, a 

 few patches. The base of the comparatively steep ground rising from the 

 interior line of these plains and stripes, even when they reach the highest 

 grade of height, is usually at about that elevation above the sea, or a 

 little lower. An immersion, therefore, to this extent, would leave us 

 with new coasts, not only much circumscribed, but considerably diiferent 

 from the present — for one thing, much bolder. It would also deprive us 

 of the sites of the lower parts of London, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, 

 Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Inverness, and of the entire sites of Portsmouth, 

 Southampton, and Chichester, of Hull, Dumfries, Greenock, Leith, and 

 Perth. The same submersion, extended to the Continent, would blot 

 no small space from the map of Europe. 



" Where we have large expanses of these low lands, the flatness is 

 usually very striking. For instance, in an extensive plain beside the 

 Bristol Channel, the equability is so great over large areas, that the 

 Exeter Railway passes over it for twenty-eight miles (from Ashton 

 Water to Claverham Court), with a gradual rise of only four feet ; and 

 even this, perhaps, is to be attributed to the lines taking an oblique course 

 athwart the plain, and against its sea-ward declination. Such equability 

 makes the land almost the rival of the sea in the trueness of its surface 

 to the centre of the earth, and forcibly suggests that water was concerned 

 in giving it such a configuration. Such a plain is, indeed, precisely 

 what would be presented to us as a piece of new land, if some of our 

 shallow seas, such as the Bristol Channel, the mouth of the Humber, or 

 the Solway Frith, were to sink forty feet below their present level. The 

 carses in Scotland are also generally level, though not without partial 

 inequalities, which a slight examination suifices to detect. In the con- 

 figuration of the ground, thus level with, in many places, the small in- 

 clination proper to a beach over which the tide rises and falls ; in the 

 cliffs which are often seen rising along the interior limit of the plain ; 

 in the constitution of the soil, composed of layers of sand or of clay, or of 

 both, alternating often with beds of shells, we see clear evidence that these 

 grounds were formed along the margins of an ancient sea, the highest 

 inland part speaking of one about 44 feet above the present. Such is 

 the announcement from these great expanses. When we look, however, 



