298 ' QHE ATLANTIC. [CHAP. Iv. 
neath this, at a depth of about forty-five feet, there is a bed of 
a kind of peat, and vegetable soil containing stumps of cedar 
in a vertical position, and the remnants of other land vegeta- 
tion, with the remains of //elix Bermudiensis, and of several 
birds; the bed of peat was ascertained by boring to lie upon 
the ordinary hard base-rock (Fig. 77). 
Fossils, or semi-fossils, are very common throughout the isl- 
ands, and they are generally such as we find associated with 
sand-hills. One or two species of //elix, showing many varie- 
ties, are by far the most abundant; the shells can be picked out 
of the soft rock in some places in thousands, as at Mount Lang- 
ton, and along the road-side in Somerset Island. 
It is difficult to imagine, where there has been so much change 
of level, that elevations, at all events of a local character, should 
not have occurred from time to time; and yet we could not sat- 
isfy ourselves that we had detected any absolute proof of this. 
The only case in which we felt an approach to confidence was 
a rock about ten feet above high-water mark on Boaz Island, 
which seemed to contain serpula borings in position. In vari- 
ous places, however, a peculiar kind of caleareous tubing, which 
forms round roots of bushes and grass, presents itself under such 
various aspects that we may have mistaken this for serpulew. In 
many spots the rock far above high water contains marine shells; 
but these seem to be all such as might have been blown along 
with the sand into their elevated position, or have been carried 
there by other means. Zwurbo pica, for example, one of the 
commonest, is too heavy to be carried by the wind, but it is 
constantly transported far inland and to any height by the “ sol- 
dier crab.” 
In the collection of Mr. Bartram, a very enthusiastic amateur 
naturalist living near St. George’s, I found a small worn and 
rounded fossil, which seemed to be the cup of a crinoid allied 
to Holopus. Mr. Bartram kindly gave me the specimen, and 
we looked most carefully in all subsequent dredgings near 
