1896.] Prakgkr. — A Submerged Pme- Forest. 159 



we have a patch of Scrobicularia clay which rests on peat, both 

 lying in a shallow basin in the Boulder- clay, which crops out 

 close at hand. At Ballyholme, again, on the opposite or 

 southern shore of Belfast lyOUgh, the peat may be seen on the 

 shore between tides, with 15 feet of stratified marine gravels 

 overlying it, and Boulder-clay below. Similar instances might 

 be multiplied.^ 



The sections just described throw much light on the beds 

 at Bray, and will assist us to form an idea of their age, and of 

 the conditions under which they were laid down. The peat 

 evidently represents a period when the land stood slightly 

 higher than at present. The cold that characterized the 

 glacial epoch appears to have quite passed away, for the plants 

 and animals of the peat, so far as they are known, point to a 

 climate resembling that which this country at present enjoys. 

 Then came subsidence, and the accumulation of marine clays 

 on the former land-surface. This may have been the period 

 of Palaeolithic man ; we know at least that it is the zone under- 

 lying the lowest which contains Neolithic implements at I^arne. 



It may be noted that the characteristic shell of these clays 



Scrobic2cla?ia pipcrata, which is present in countless thousands 

 both at Bray and in the many places where this deposit is found 

 in Antrim and Down — while it still lives about Dublin, has 

 become completely extinct in the north-east of Ireland, and 

 many other shells of the clays have disappeared along with it. 

 The Bray series carries us no further, but the deep-water clay 

 and extensive raised beaches that overlie the Scrobicularia 

 clay in the North-east are evidence of a further period of 

 depression before the land rose to its present level. 



And thus, as we stand on the sea-shore at Bray and gaze 

 along the storm-swept edges of these old beds, we are, as it 

 were, looking down the corridors of time — glancing at a tale, 

 which, though long, occupies but the last page, nay, but the 

 last sentence, of the great book of geological history. The 

 peat tells us of a forest of dark fir-trees, under whose shadow 

 wandered herds of stately Red Deer, and packs of Wild Boars 

 and Wolves, and perhaps the great Irish E^lk, while year by 



^ See Praeger ; Report on the Bstuarine Clays of the north-east of 



Ireland. Proc. R.LA. (3) ii., No- 2, 1892. 



