r 



546 



THE WEST COAST OF ENGLAND. 



[Ch. XX. 



peat which, was covered by the stiff blue clay.* It is not 



improbable 

 species 



mammoth survived most 



temp 



ries in what has been 

 ame time, we mnst not 



called the Cavern period. At the 

 forget that the fauna, not only of the bronze age, but ol the 

 oldest lake-dwellers of Switzerland to whom the use of metals 

 was unknown, was identical with that of the historical era, 

 no mixture of the bones of the mammoth or of Bos longifrons, 

 or even of the reindeer, having been detected, whether among 

 the wild or domestic animals of the lacustrine habitations 



midden 



if, 



therefore, all the littoral, sunk forests of the south and west 

 of England are referable to about the same geological period, 

 the occasional presence in them of the mammoth will entitle 

 them to be regarded as very ancient, or of a date intervening 

 between the era of the lake-dwellings and that of the oldest 

 epoch to which man has yet been traced back. 



West 



i 



Having now brought together 



an ample body of proofs of the destructive operations ot the 

 waves, tides, and currents, on our eastern and southern 

 shores, it will be unnecessary to enter into details of changes 

 on the western coast, for they present merely a repetition of 

 the same phenomena, and in general on an inferior scale. 

 On the borders of the estuary of the Severn the flats of 



Somersetsl 



accessions, while, on the other hand, the coast of Cheshire, 



Mer 



1764, many hundred yards, and some affirm more than halt 

 a mile, by the advance of the sea upon the abrupt cliffs of red 

 clay and marls. Within the period above mentioned —- 1 



f There are 



Cardiganshire § of far 



traditions in Pembroke shire J and 



greater losses of territory than that which the Lionnesse tale 



of Cornwall pretends to commemorate. They are all impor- 



* One of these skulls, referred by 

 Prof. Owen to Mephas Trimigenius, 

 has been presented to the British Mu- 

 seum by the Hon. W. Stanley, M.P., on 

 whose property they were found. 



f Stevenson, Jameson's Ed. New 



Phil. Journ. No. 8. p. 386. 



\ Camden, who cites Gyraldus : also 



Eav, 'On the Deluge,' Phys. Theol., 



p. '228. 



Meyrick's Cardigan. 





\ 



n- 

 mi 





