IN THE SUBMEKGED EOKEST OF TORBAT. 21 



The evideuee in favour of extensive encroachment of the sea in 

 Torbay is conclusive. Large tracts of land, houses, and roads have 

 disappeared within the memory of man ; while maps less than 300 

 years old show, with more or less accuracy, a shore-line hundreds of 

 feet in advance of the present one. It seems probable therefore that 

 the Paignton-Preston inlet was once barred by a beach, distant at 

 least 750, and probably very many more, feet from the present 

 beach, behind which the land-water accumulated to a height of about 

 seven feet above the high-tide level, and that in the lake, or mere, 

 thus formed the forest- clay was laid down. By the breaking down 

 of the dam, the sea was admitted, covering what is now Paignton 

 Marsh with coarse sand, to be followed by blown-sand deposits, and 

 in this way the sea was again expelled to the limits of the present 

 coast-line. Meanwhile the willows and marsh-plants whose debris 

 and roots form the greater part of the so-called peat-beds overlying 

 the clay took possession of the low-lying ground. 



Man, as we have seen, was present in the Paignton-Preston inlet 

 either before the lake in question was formed, living on the " head," 

 or inhabiting a pile-dwelling during the deposition of the clay, or 

 even, if the lacustrine conditions were intermittent, settled on the 

 clay itself; but, in any case, the suggested explanation makes it 

 unnecessary to suppose that the bronze-makers of Eedcliffe Towers 

 were witnesses of those wide oscillations of level which have here- 

 tofore been associated with the physical history of the submerged 

 Torbay forests. The topmost beds of these deposits have been shown 

 to be no older than the Poman occupation of Britain, while their 

 base dates from the bronze age. If the molar of Eleplias primi- 

 genius which has already been referred to was really derived from 

 a seaward extension of the forest lying exposed between tide-marks 

 in Torbay, then it must be concluded that the mammoth survived in 

 Devonshire almost down to Poman times, and that he was certainly 

 contemporary there with brouze-making man. 



But it is not necessary to suppose that the same bed of clay and 

 the same forest were continuous for great distances seaward in 

 Torbay. Buried forests are, elsewhere, almost always found in tiers, 

 sometimes, as in the Penland districts, four or more one above 

 another. At Blackpool, only a few miles from Torbay, Mr. A. B,. 

 Hunt* has given reasons for believing that one submerged forest 

 rests upon another ; and these forests might, of course, differ vastly 

 in age. Similarly there may be forest-beds beneath the waters of 

 Torbay older than those which are visible on Torre-Abbey, Paignton, 

 Preston, and Goodrington Sands, and the mammoth's tooth may have 

 come from one of these. In any case, the submerged Forest of Tor- 

 bay, and possibly therefore other submerged forests fringing the 

 English coast, are even more truly things of yesterday than has 

 hitherto been supposed. 



. * Trans. Dev. Assoc, A. E. Himt, July 1881. 



