Correspondence — J. C. Ward. 285 



occur without any sinking of the land or rising of the sea. And I, 

 for one, agree with Mr. Kinahan, that they are " submerged " at the 

 present day, in so far that they are below the level suitable to the 

 growth of trees, of the kinds of which they consisted. A singular 

 fact about these old forests that requires explanation is their almost 

 universal occurrence at a certain uniform level of flat land. It might 

 otherwise have been expected, under these circumstances, that they 

 would have grown upon a surface of silt, deposited by water action. 

 But, as far as my observation goes, they usually grew upon the clay, 

 which forms the bed rock of the locality. At Selsey it is distinctly 

 weathered. 1 How came these tracts of uniform level to exist at so 

 many localities ? 



At some places, however, there is a gravelly bed beneath the 

 forest, and, in such, at Barnstaple occur flint knives. 



There is a submarine forest at a much lower level indicated in 

 Mr. Godwin-Austen's paper first referred to (section no. 1, pi. vi.), 

 which must, I think, belong to a period antecedent to that of the 

 forests of which I have been speaking. 



I would take the liberty of referring upon the above and kindred 

 topics to my paper on " The Warp," in the Journal of the Geo- 

 logical Society, vol. xxii. p. 553. 0. Fisheb. 

 Habxton Rectory, Cambridge. 



A VOICE FROM THE PAST. 



Sib, — I suppose there has been no more thorough and accurate 

 observer of geological phenomena than the late Prof. Sedgwick. 

 On going through his papers of nigh half a century ago, on the 

 English Lake District, I am constantly struck with his minuteness 

 of investigation, and his careful and logical deductions. Had he 

 been blessed . with a good ordnance map, there would have been 

 comparatively little general work left for the Geological Survey to 

 accomplish. The following extract from one of the late Professor's 

 letters, dated May 24th, 1842, is interesting in the present day, 

 when land-ice is supposed by some to have been equal to any 

 task : — " No one will, I trust, be so bold as to affirm that an 

 uninterrupted glacier could ever have extended from Shap Fells to the 

 coast of Holderness, and borne along the blocks of granite through 

 the whole distance, without any help from the floating power of 

 water. The supposition involves difficulties tenfold greater than are 

 implied in the phenomenon it pretends to account for. The glaciers 

 descending through the valleys of the higher Alps have an enormous 

 transporting power : but there is no such power in a great sheet of 

 ice expanded over a country without mountains, and at a nearly 

 dead level." 



The various Arctic voyages made of late years have shown that 

 the drifting of pack-ice is more often due to winds of constant 

 direction acting upon the many slight irregularities of the ice, than 

 to currents affecting great thicknesses of the watery strata below. 



1 See the writer's paper on Bracklesham Bed, Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xviii 

 p. 74, note. 



