118 H. H. Howorth—Traces of a Great Post-Glacial Flood. 
greatest wonders of Bohuslaen; for they lay inland near a whole 
quarter of a mile, in some places, from the sea. These shell hills 
consist of periwinkles and bivalve shells (Snacke- och Muskle-skal), 
which are here assembled in such numbers that one wonders how so 
many living beings existed on the earth. We visited Capell Hill, which 
lay a quarter of a mile beyond the southern Uddevalla Gate ; then we 
went to Sammered, which lay nearly a quarter of a mile from the town, 
north-east. In both places were these shell hills, especially and most 
markedly at Sammered. Here there were bare and hillocky ridges 
of grey stone, on the sides which face the town or the sea, where 
the bay was originally bent in. The earth was slightly convex on 
the summits of the above-named hill, and made a curve, where the 
black mould, which was seldom more than a foot and a half deep, 
thinned off; the shell-bed, which was two or three fathoms deep, 
underlaid it. Under this came in succession pure clay. No shells 
were seen above this stratum. Among the bare hill ridges they 
stretched, however, altogether from the hill downwards under the 
black mould, often to the breadth of several gunshots. The shells 
lay clean and unchanged, with no addition of soil, only strewn over 
with a little gravel, such as is thrown up on the beaches” (Linneus, 
West Gotha Resa, pp. 197-8; Memoirs Geol. Survey, vol. i. p. 364). 
This is a very faithful account of what is to be found here, and 
assuredly it is a very strange one. To find shells of the most fragile 
character, perfectly preserved, heaped up in this fashion many feet 
thick, with hardly any mixture of sand or shingle, quite heterogeneously, 
the species being mixed together in most admirable disorder, those 
from deep water being mixed with those which are purely littoral, 
shells which occur loosely in the sand being mixed up with abundant 
specimens of more than one species of barnacles which are attached 
to rocks, etc., and of mussels, etc., occurring gregariously in beds. 
This is assuredly a very puzzling assemblage. In the first place, it 
is absolutely clear that these shells could not and did not live where 
they are found. They could not have lived in heaps such as these 
are. Shells having such very diverse habitats could not have lived 
all together mixed up in this heterogeneous fashion, bivalves and 
univalves all huddled confusedly together in myriads. This is 
absolutely plain. 
This has been noticed of the shell-beds elsewhere. Speaking of 
the Moel Tryfaen shells, Mr. Forbes says, “I have lately examined 
them carefully with a view to see whether they indicate an ancient 
coast-line and beach, or an ancient sea-bottom. But they cannot be 
regarded as indicating either, being a confused mixture of fragments 
of species from all depths, both littoral and such as invariably live at 
a depth of many fathoms—of such species as Astarte ellipticu, Mytilus 
edulis, Tellina solidula, Cardium edule, Venus gallina, Buecinum 
undatum, Mactra solida, Dentalium entalis, Cyprina islandica, and 
Turritella terebra—inhabitants, some of muddy grounds, some of 
sandy, some of rocky. Deep- and shallow-water species, mingled, 
could at no time have lived together or have been thrown up on one 
shore” (op. cit. p. 384). 
