Mr. Rose’s Sketch of the Geology of West Norfolk. 37 
verus was the first to intersect the fens with causeways*. From 
the time that the Romans finally renounced the sovereignty 
of Britain, in the year 427, to the reign of Charles I., 1630, 
(when the drainage of the Jevel was projected by, and com- 
menced under the auspices of, the Earl of Bedford, being com- 
pleted by his son in 1653,) a period of 1203 years, its cultiva- 
tion was neglected, and it became a second time extensively 
inundated, its forests laid prostrate, and in process of time 
buried beneath lacustrine silt (No. 2, Kau-brink section); again 
the rivers flowed in natural channels +, and ultimately this 
morass, through the enterprise and skill of man, is reclaimed, 
and the Bedford Level emerges a fertile tract of country. 
The coin of Charles II. and the pair of scissors met with in 
the excavation at Denver Sluice (vol. vii. page 173.) must have 
been found at a spot that had been previously opened, for 
the bed of peat No. 4. could not have been formed at so late 
a period. 
Many smal] formations of peat and deposits of silt are 
found on the margins of the rivulets, and in the small basins 
occurring on the surface of the dzlwvium; these contain the 
shells of existing amd indigenous species of fluviatile Testacea. 
Horns and bones of a species of elk, stag, and other mam- 
malia are found imbedded in the peat. 
Submarine Forest.—We possess but little information re- 
specting the submarine forest off the coast of Norfolk. 
« A forest seems to have extended from the coast of Lin- 
colnshire a considerable way along the Norfolk coast, as there 
is on the shore near Thornham, at low water, the appearance 
of a large forest having been at some period interred and 
swallowed up by the waves. Stools of numerous large timber 
trees, and many trunks are to be seen, but so rotten, that they 
may be penetrated by a spade. ‘These lie in a black mass 
of vegetable fibres, consisting of decayed branches, leaves, 
rushes, flags, &c.t Also, off Hunstanton and Brancaster, at 
ebb tide, a bank of mud inclosing trunks and branches of 
* Dugdale mentions one, “supposed to have been made by him of 24 
miles in length, extending from Denver to Peterborough ; this was com- 
posed of gravel about three feet in depth, and sixty feet broad ; it was dis- 
covered beneath a covering of moor from three to five feet in thickness.” 
Other works of art have also been found beneath the moor at various 
places in the great level. 
+ “In the year 870, the Danes (then Pagans) led by Inguar and Ubba, 
made an incursion into this realm, and destroyed it (the religious house 
at Ely): for such was the depth of the waters, which compassing this isle 
extended to the sea, that they had an easy access unto it by shipping.’— 
Dugdale, Edit. 1772, page 181. 
{ Philosophical Transactions, No. 481, and Beauties of England and 
Wales, vol. xi. p. 94. 
