Civ PEOCEEDLNGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May I904. 



In the second place, had the position of the sunk forests in the 

 southern half of England and Wales been due to a rise in the sea- 

 level, similar evidence of submerged land-surfaces at corresponding- 

 depths should have been met with generally round our coast-line. 

 Neolithic man was an inhabitant of the country before this sub- 

 mergence was complete, and has dropped his handiwork in the beds 

 of peat. In the North of Ireland and in Central Scotland, however, 

 during Neolithic time the land was emerging from the sea, and man 

 has left his flint- flakes and weapons in the youngest raised beaches. 

 Thus in the same period of geological time the sea-level must be 

 supposed to have risen 50 or 60 feet in the south, and to have sunk 

 25 or 30 feet in the north. But we cannot suppose that within a 

 distance of 300 or 400 miles there could have been a difference of 

 75 feet or more in the level of the water. 



In the third place, I have very little doubt that when accurate 

 levellings are taken of the raised beaches, it will be found that their 

 apparent horizontality is not absolute, but that they rise slowly in 

 certain directions, more particularly towards the axis of the country. 

 I think it not improbable also that a difference of level will be 

 detected between the same beach on the eastern and on the western 

 coast, and between its most northerly and most southerly parts. 

 Such evidence of a deformation of the land can only be determined 

 by the careful geodetic measurements which I long to see carried 

 out. 



In the meantime, on a review of the whole evidence, I feel 

 confident that the balance of proof is largely in favour of the old 

 belief that the changes of level, of which our islands 

 furnish such signal illustrations, have been primarily 

 due, not to any oscillations of the surface of the 

 ocean, but to movements of the terrestrial crust con- 

 nected with the slow cooling and contraction of our 

 globe. If this belief is to be overthrown, better evidence must 

 be brought against it than has been hitherto adduced. 



