46 CORNISH POST-TERTIARY GEOLOGY. 



continental conditions, or at a time when the land stood at such an 

 elevation as to allow of their growth over a considerable tract beyond 

 the present coast-line, and yet sufficiently far removed from the then 

 existing coasts to escape their baneful effects. In opposition to this 

 it might be urged that there is evidence to show that proximity to 

 a gradually contracting coast-line did not prove fatal to the growth 

 of woods on the south coast of Cornwall, till a comparatively recent 

 date. For in the ancient tradition of St. Michael's Mount being in a 

 wood, names of animals long since extinct are retained. " We thus 

 suppose that Caran meant stag ; Da, fallow deer ; Byk or Kidiorch, 

 buck ; Yorch, roe, etc."^ But the old cliflf-line, at the foot of which 

 the narrow belt of woodland (whose traces are alone known to us) 

 was situated, would ward off the inclement breezes from the north 

 and west, and probably allow of the growth of trees almost as near 

 the water's edge as they are now growing at IMount Edgecombe near 

 Plymouth. The absence of remains of Felidfe or Pachyderms in the 

 forest bed, the indications of charred matter (as in the streara-tiu 

 sections of Merry Meeting and Carnon), as well as of shaped wood (as 

 in the sections of Huel Darlington and Pentuan stream works) ; the 

 discovery of human skulls at Carnon and Pentuan ; and of a human 

 skeleton near Tarnon Dean (? Tannerdane), at 22 feet below high- 

 water, if not an anachronism, tend to fix the date of the submergence 

 of the forests at a time considerably posterior to the existence of the 

 extinct cave mammalia; and coupled with the tradition given by 

 Mr. Couch seem to indicate the contemporaneity of the old race of 

 men with the animals whose bones are found in association with 

 theirs, inducing one to think that during a thousand years, at least, 

 before the time of Diodorus, they witnessed the gradual diminution 

 of their hunting grounds and the destruction of that part of the then 

 existing forests that lay beyond the limits of our present coasts. 



"Under the alluvial deposits, both of Pentuan and Carnon, remains 

 of deer were found in the forest bed. IMr. Couch, after a comparison 

 with specimens from Ireland, identified them Avith the Irish Elk 

 (3Iegaceros Hihernicus). In Truro Museum there are specimens of 

 Strong ijlocer OS speloeus from Pentuan, and of Koebuck (C. capreolus), 

 and Bos pr'uiiiijcnius from Carnon. 



' Couch, Trans. Eoy. Gtol. Soc. Corn. vol. vii. p. 264, etc. 



