54 



II. LOCALITY. 



It must not be supposed that a large number of metallic 

 articles was obtained in a mass, or all together, as if they 

 had originally formed one collection. They are evidently 

 of different ages in point of time, and they were also 

 sufficiently varied in point of space. To secure accuracy 

 I proceeded to Hoylake on several occasions, and went 

 over all the locality with the old man who found the 

 articles. The evidences which I possessed, iuternal and 

 external, coincided exactlj with the account which he gave. 



The place which is known as the Submarine Forest, and 

 to which several members of the Literary and Philosophical 

 Society of Liverpool made an excursion in April, 1845, 

 lies between the lighthouse at Leasowe and the mouth of 

 the Dee. To whatever cause the fact is attributable, it is 

 unquestionable that a place in which large quantities of 

 vegetable matter attained maturity and decay, is now daily 

 covered by the tide. The particular portion of it which 

 lies west of the Dove Marks on the shore, or the " Dove 

 Spit" in the water, is the locality of the antiquities ; and 

 we are bound to infer that it must have been a scene for 

 human intercourse, as well as the site of a forest. It is 

 directly to the seaward of the hamlet called Great Meols, 

 and does not strictly extend so far west as the village of 

 Hoylake, the distance of which is about half a mile. 



The area over which the articles were found is several 

 acres in extent, and consists of a bottom of light blue clay, 

 with black earth like turf bog at the top. It is, of course, 

 lower than the adjacent land, but probably not more than 

 two or three feet, if so much, while a sand-hill — variable 

 according to the state of the wind — rests upon this bed, and 

 presents its side to the sea, from four to twelve and even 

 twenty feet high. From indications both on the land and 

 on the shore, below high water mark, it is obvious that the 

 present top of the black earth was, at one time, the actual 

 surface of the land ; and on it the articles have been picked 

 up occasionally, at low water, during a period of several 

 years. They were most readily obtained, as might be 

 expected, on bright sunny days, and they were always sought 

 for in places which the action of the water had left quite 

 clean. Very few were obtained by breaking up the masses 

 of black earth, or indeed any where but on the surface ; so 

 that the tide may yet be daily washing over many articles of 

 value, or may have swept away hundreds of others. The 

 collector has been resident in the village for thirty- six years, 



