. 221 
NEOLITHIC LIFE IN LINCOLNSHIRE. 
JOHN H. COOKE, F.G.S,, F.L.S., etc., 
Edleston, Worcester; Vice-President of the Lincolnshire Science Society. 
oe THIRD PAPER. 
For previous papers see ‘ The Naturalist,’ March 1898, pp. 77-79, and May 1898, pp. 145-148. 
THE question of the age of the prehistoric boat found at Brigg 
has led to much discussion. Mr. Atkinson has already treated 
this part of the subject so exhaustively that I do not propose to 
do more than briefly outline the objections that a geologist 
would raise to its alleged post-Roman origin. Relics of human 
industry such as these derive their value as time indices from 
the geologic horizon at which they are found. The geological 
evidences in this case are quite opposed to either a Roman or 
a post-Roman origin. The beds that were exposed in the 
excavation in which the boat was discovered exhibited in section 
the following sequence :— 
A. Surface soil. 
B. Peat and forest bed. 
c. Brown alluvial clay. 
D. ark bluish-grey alluvial clay. 
gE. Peat and forest bed. 
F. Glacial beds. 
Bed B marks the horizon at which Roman remains, as a rule, 
occur in this neighbourhood ; the Brigg boat was found lying 
on bed g. The alluvial clays c and p, with their sedges and 
marine forms of iatomaceaw, indicate a time when the 
Ancholme Valley probably formed a shallow arm of the Humber, 
and it was possibly for the purpose of navigating the lagoons 
of the Carrs that the boat was fashioned. 
The presence of forest beds below and above the clays points 
to the occurrence of heavy floodings of the Ancholme Valley— 
floodings which converted the whole of the Carrs into a morass, - 
and which remained long enough to destroy the lower forest and 
to bury it beneath the alluvium of the mud-laden waters, . The 
size of the trees that grew in the lower forest, the thickness 
of the forest bed, the stratigraphical characteristics of the over- 
lying clays, and lastly the formation of the upper peat and 
forest beds, in both of which remains of undoubted Roman 
origin have been discovered, all serve to demonstrate how great 
an interval of time must have elapsed between the fashioning of 
“the Brigg boat and.the coming of Julius Czesar. 
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