Reviews — C. Reid- — Subvierged Forests. 371 



history of the subject. The occurrence of peaty beds and of sturops 

 of trees that had evidently grown on the area had been observed 

 more than a century ago on the borders of estuaries and of other 

 marshy tracts adjacent to the open sea, as in Lincolnshire. For the 

 most part these exposures aflorded no clue to the thickness and , 

 character of the strata that are now known to compose the 

 submerged forests, and it is chiefly from the fine sections opened up 

 in excavations for docks that the great interest and importance of 

 these accumulations have been made manifest. 



As the author points out, there is no doubt that some portions of 

 marshy areas have subsided through compression and shrinkage of 

 silty and peaty deposits. Again, in some instances alluvial areas 

 that had been protected from the sea by higher portions of the 

 mainland, as in north-western Norfolk, or by accumulations of beach 

 or blown sand, as in the case of Eccles on the north-eastern coast of 

 the county, have been brought within the influence of the sea by the 

 erosion of the barriers or the shifting inland of the sand-dunes. The 

 true submerged forests, however, are those which have undergone 

 a considerable amount of depression, proved when the full thickness 

 of the accumulations has been determined. Judging by the evidence 

 of various excavations and borings, the term is rightly applied to 

 nearly all the submerged forests observed along our coasts. Modern 

 science requires that attention be bestowed not on the mass of the 

 strata, but on each differing layer, so that the sequence of geological 

 events, the fauna and flora, and the objects of archaeological interest 

 may be correctly recorded. The evidence supplied by dockyards 

 and borings proves that some 50 or 60 feet of deposits may be 

 grouped with the submerged forests, excluding the most recent 

 marsh deposits and the uppermost estuarine silt or warp' known as 

 Scroiicularia-claj . Deeper down there are found alternations of peat 

 or peaty soil with roots of trees, and estuarine silt, at three or four 

 successive horizons, the whole often based on estuarine sand and 

 gravel. 



The author rightly refers to older deposits of somewhat similar 

 character, such as the Cromer forest-bed of Pliocene age and certain 

 Pleistocene deposits, as at Clacton, to which, however, the term 

 ' submerged forests ' is by common usage not applied. In dealing 

 with the submerged forests he gives particulars only of the principal 

 localities where careful detailed evidence has been obtained, as along 

 the Thames Yalley at Tilbury. There the channel was cut to a 

 depth of about 60 feet below the modern river-bed, and the 

 maximum elevation of the land is estimated to have been about 80 feet 

 above its present level. Further north, along the eastern coasts, 

 it is noted that in East Norfolk and in the Fenland the ascertained 

 depth of the Alluvial strata with peat-beds is 50 or 60 feet, and in 

 the Humber the channel was about 60 feet deep, as in the case of the 

 Thames. It is remarked that "north of Flamborough Head it seems 

 as though depression gave place to elevation, and when we pass into 

 Scotland the Neolithic deposits seem to be raised beaches instead of 

 submerged forests". Similar evidence is referred to in Scandinavia, 

 Northern Ireland, and the Isle of Man. , 



