iv. SUBMERSION OF LAND. 45 



especially on the Evenlode and the Cherwell, through which a 

 communication is opened to the great midland sea which reaches 

 to the hills of Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and Shropshire. More 

 than half the area of land in the Oxford district is now submerged. 



-^ 







Diagram XIV. Land submerged 1000 feet. 



Finally, raise the level of the water to 1000 feet, and nothing 

 of land remains but the higher peaks of the Malvern Hills, Cleeve 

 near Cheltenham, and Broadway near Evesham. At intervals 

 during the elevation, from 500 to 1000 feet, the straits of Evenlode 

 and Cherwell might admit ice-rafts in abundance from the northern 

 seas, and allow of violent wave action on the parts of the land 

 brought successively to the condition of sea-bed. Thus may the red 

 pebbles of Warwickshire have been transported to the Vale of the 

 Thames, and many important effects of watery violence occasioned. 

 The events here sketched have really occurred; the sea-line has 

 been changed in the manner stated, in a comparatively late part 

 of geological time, as it had often been changed before. In the 

 periods which it is agreed to call pre-glacial, glacial, and post- 

 glacial, the land which is now Britain was made to sink (relatively 

 to the sea-level) so as to be in great part submerged, and again 

 it has been by a reverse process restored to nearly, but not quite 

 its former elevation. There is no evidence of this being a cata- 

 clysmic process, but much reason to treat it as a gradual subsidence 

 and a gradual resurgence of the land. Great and inevitable watery 

 violence accompanied these movements, and by them every part 



