8 INFLUENCE Otf CLIMATIC AND GEOLOGICAL CHANGES 



According to recent surveys a high sub-marine plateau, with a 

 steep fall of 1,000 fathoms towards the Atlantic, begins from 

 Northern Norway, and is continued as far as Spitzbergen. 

 Several islands arise from this plateau and may be viewed as the 

 remains of a sunken land. There was probably an interrupted 

 contemporaneous migration during the latter part of the Tertiary 

 Age over a direct connection between Greenland, Iceland, and 

 the Faroe Islands. 



A series of transverse sections from the coast of England to 

 that of France, drawn north and south, will show that the 

 Channel area is one of depression, and that on either side, the 

 sedimentary strata have an inward dip. Much of the irregularity 

 of the present outline of the Channel is due to the nature of the 

 beds which occur along it, good illustrations of which may be 

 seen in the deep bay between Berry Head and Portland, con- 

 sisting of sands and marls. The process by which masses of 

 solid materials can be pared off parallel with the sea-level is due 

 to the action of wind, or surface waves. The whole area had at 

 one time a higher level, as proved by numerous instances, where 

 old forest-ground passes beneath the present sea-bed along the 

 coast. As proximity to the sea is unfavourable to forest-growth 

 we may take it for granted that the conditions of the land at the 

 forest-period were continental, indicated, too, by the great size 

 and height of the trees, none of which have their usual habitats 

 along the seaboard. We may safely conclude that the 

 forest-area previous to the Pleistocene age, was in the condition 

 of dry land, when the British Islands were connected with France 

 on the south and with Ireland on the west, and of a far greater 

 amount of elevation than at present. At this period we find a 

 wide-spread coniferous vegetation across the British Isles from 

 the coast of Norfolk on the east to Cardigan on the west, of 

 which Pinus sylwstris and Abies excelsa (the Spruce) are of some 

 interest, as the former is no longer indigenous in the British 

 Islands. It is recorded in submerged forests of the Neolithic age, 

 and at the base of peat-mosses, nearly throughout Britain and 

 Ireland ; Bovey Tracey, Devon ; Hoxne, Suffolk (Late Glacial) ; 



