O'Reilly— 0;« the Wasfo of the Coast of Irdand, 8fc. 107 



PreSistoric Period covers all the events which took place between the 

 Pleistocene Age on the one hand, and the heginning of history on the other P 



(p. 248.) — He says : " The Pro-Historic Period is separated from 

 the Pleistocene by a long interval, during which not only great 

 changes in the zoology of Great Britain (and Ireland) took place, but 

 also corresponding changes in the geography. 



" At the close of the Pleistocene Age (fig. 32), the valleys which 

 united Britain to North Erance, Germany, and Scandanavia, as well 

 as to Ireland, were gradually depressed beneath sea level, and the 

 North Sea, the British Channel, the Irish Sea, and the Western 

 Atlantic Coast line generally, became very much as we find it now 

 (see fig. 95, p. 254). An examination, however, of the submerged 

 forests and peat bogs, proves that the downward movement had not 

 ceased until a late period in the Neolithic Age.'''' 



(p. 250.) — He shows that, "In West Somerset and at Minehead, 

 we may infer that man was living in this region during the time that 

 a dense forest overshadowed a large portion of what is now the British 

 Channel, and before the deposit of the blue fresh-water clay, and the 

 marine silt, at a time not later than that marked by the layer of peat 

 or vegetable soil in which the prostrate trees are embedded." 



(p. 251.) — "The submerged forests are merely scraps spared by 

 the waves of an ancient growth of oak, ash, and yew, extending in 

 Somersetshire underneath the peat and alluvium, and joining the 

 great morasses of Glastonbury, Sedgemoor, and Athelney, in which 

 ISTeolithic implements have been met with by Mr. Stradling. 



" In Torbay as well as in North Devon and Somersetshire, man 

 was in possession of the country when the land stretched farther out 

 to sea than at the present time. In this particular case (Torbay), 

 Mr. Pengelly estimates the submergence to have been not less than 

 40 feet, since the forest was alive." 



Similar proofs of submergence are to be met with on our coasts, 

 wherever the land dips gently under the water-line. 



(p. 253.) — He says : " It is worthy of remark that the enormous, 

 trunks of the trees prove that the Scotch firs, oaks, yews, willows, and 

 birches, of which the forest was in these places mainly composed, 

 must have grown at some distance from the ancient coast line, since 

 the westerly winds sweeping over Lancashire from the Atlantic at the 

 present time prevent the fi'ee growth of vegetation on every unpro- 

 tected spot on the coast. The prevalent winds, however, are proved to 

 have been very much the same, since then as now, by the position of the 

 trees, which lie prostrate, with their heads pointing towards the east. 



