432 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



but little doubt, therefore, that many old land-surfaces must lie 

 concealed below recent beach and estuarine accumulations upon 

 most of the low shelving shores of England. 



In the majority of cases the trees are found rooted in the 

 old soil. They consist of the common species which are still 

 indigenous to Britain, such as oak, pine, hazel, birch, alder, ash, 

 yew, etc. The vegetable layer varies from less than one foot up 

 to twelve feet or even twenty feet in thickness, and appears in 

 some cases to be entirely composed of the ddhris of trees. More 

 commonly, however, the remains of trees occur at the base of 

 the bed, and are covered over with peat formed of sphagnum, 

 sedges, rushes, or other marsh-loving plants. As might have 

 been expected from their extensive distribution, the submerged 

 forests repose upon strata of widely different ages. In certain 

 districts, for example, the immediately-underlying stratum may 

 be some member of the glacial series, while in other places the 

 trees are rooted in Palaeolithic and ossiferous gravels, or in strata 

 belonging to the older Tertiary formations. But in no single 

 instance do they rest upon any passage-beds which might serve 

 to bridge over the hiatus which obtains between the close of the 

 Glacial Period and the beginning of Postglacial times. There 

 is everywhere an unconformity between the peat-beds and the 

 latest of the glacial deposits upon which they may chance to 

 repose. The Ice Age had passed away and the later glacial 

 deposits had been greatly eroded long before the trees of the 

 submarine forests had begun to grow. To make this clear a 

 few typical cases will be described. 



Among the most noteworthy of the submarine forests of 

 England are those which extend along the maritime districts of 

 Cheshire and Lancashire from the mouth of the Dee to More- 

 cambe Bay. The old forest-beds of the Mersey and the neigh- 

 bouring coasts have been long known and frequently described 

 by antiquarians and others, from Leland's time down to the 

 present day, so that we are pretty well informed as to their 

 character and the mode of their occurrence. A most inter- 

 esting resume' of all that antiquarians have been able to tell us 



