390 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



organic remains, the evidence they supply as to climatic con- 

 ditions is only negative. Thus, they afford no trace of the 

 action of ice, they contain no brick-clays like those of late 

 glacial age, neither do they show any ice-floated stones and 

 boulders. They closely resemble, in fact, the river-deposits of 

 the present day. 



4. The next bed in ascending order is the buried forest and 

 peat. It is well exposed at various places in the bluffs of the 

 present rivers, and its position has been further proved by 

 numerous well-borings which show that it is present over a 

 wide area. It rests usually upon the surface of the old river- 

 deposits just described, but sometimes when these are absent 

 we find it overlying directly the red and parti-coloured brick- 

 clays of the late glacial series. Although it may be said to 

 occur approximately at the same level, namely at or about that 

 of mean-tide, it by no means rests upon a perfectly horizontal 

 surface. Thus in some places its bed is flush with the surface 

 of the river at high-tide, as in the Earn opposite Abernetky. 

 In other places down the valley it is covered even at low-tide. 

 Mr. Durham, Newport (Fife), tells me that he has seen it 

 extensively exposed upon the low shores in the neighbourhood 

 of Wormit Bay. He also informs me that in building the jetty 

 at the south end of the unfortunate Tay Bridge the contractors 

 cut through a bed of clay abundantly charged with twigs, leaves, 

 nuts, and other vegetable-remains, and that in founding the 

 piers of the bridge a bed of what the workmen called " peat " 

 was frequently cut through. From the samples shown to him, 

 however, Mr. Durham says it was clearly not peat, but a bluish 

 sandy clay full of vegetable ddbris. The most interesting trace 

 of the old land-surface he had observed was at the Stannergate, 

 about half-way between Dundee and Broughty-Ferry, where a 

 bed of the alluvial clay or silt was seen cropping out from 

 below the gravel of the beach. On digging into the bed 

 abundant remains of plants were exposed, amongst these being 

 the trunk and a large branch of what appeared to be an oak. 

 It was buried in a mass of well-preserved leaves and twigs, and 



