Ch. XX.] INROADS OF THE SEA ON THE WEST COAST. 



545 





tradition of the submersion of the Lionnesse, a country said 

 to have stretched from the Land's End to the Scilly Islands. 

 The tract, if it ever existed, must have been thirty miles in 

 length, and perhaps ten in breadth. The land now remaining 

 on either side is from two hundred to three hundred feet 

 high; the intervening sea about three hundred feet deep. 

 Although there is no authentic evidence for this romantic 

 tale, it probably originated in some former inroads of the 

 Atlantic, accompanying, perhaps, a subsidence of land on 

 this coast. 



If we then turn to the Bristol Channel, we find that both 

 on the north and south sides of it there are numerous re- 

 mains of submerged forests ; to one of these at Porlock Bay, 

 on the coast of Somersetshire, Mr. Godwin- Austen * has 

 lately called particular attention, and has shown that it ex- 

 tends far from the land. There is indeed good reason to be- 

 lieve that there was once a woodland tract uniting Somerset- 



through the middle of which the ancient 



Wales 



Severn flowed. The former existence of such land enables 

 us to comprehend how along the southern coast of Glamor- 

 anshire fissures and caves in the face of precipitous cliffs 

 at the base of which the sea now beats, may have been 

 frequented by the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, hyena, 

 and other quadrupeds, most of them now extinct. 



At St. Bride's Bay, in Pembrokeshire, and proceeding 



farther to the north in Cardiganshire and again in North 



Wales, (as in Anglesea and Denbighshire,) we have repetitions 



of the same appearances of ancient forests adjoining the coast. 



One of these in Anglesea reminds us in a striking manner 



of the phenomena before mentioned as characterising the 



forest-bed of Tor Abbey. A bed of peat three feet thick, 



with the ^ stumps and roots of trees, was observed by the 



Honourable W. Stanley, exposed at low water in the harbour 



of Holyhead, and stretching upwards to a slight elevation 



above the sea, where the excavations made for the railway in 



1849 brought to light two perfect heads of the mammoth. 



Its tusks and molars lay two feet below the surface in the 



vol. I. 



* Memoir read Nov. 1865. Gcol. Proc. 



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