BRITISH POSTGLACIAL &> RECENT DEPOSITS. 443 



The climate had undergone a great change, and the land became 

 covered with a strong forest-growth. At the time those trees 

 nourished the coast must necessarily have extended much farther 

 out to sea, since the old land-surface occurs in places at a depth 

 of not less than 67 feet below the present sea-level. Man and 

 the postglacial mammalia were then in full occupation of the 

 ground. No trace of any of the extinct or migrated pachyderms 

 which were characteristic of Palaeolithic times has ever been 

 found at this horizon, nor has any relic of Palaeolithic man him- 

 self been encountered. Here, as in Scotland and the north-west 

 of England, we find the postglacial deposits resting directly 

 upon accumulations belonging to the Glacial Period. There are 

 no passage-beds bridging over the gulf that separates the dis- 

 appearance of cold conditions from the advent of that genial 

 climate which nourished the great forest-growths of early post- 

 glacial times. Possibly, however, were the lower portions of the 

 buried forest sufficiently examined, such evidence as we are in 

 want of might be forthcoming. It is not unlikely that some 

 lucky botanist may yet be able to detect there certain traces of 

 a flora indicative of colder conditions than obtained when the 

 oak and its congeners first entered Cornwall. 



3d, The beds overlying the old buried forest prove that after 

 a prolonged time the sea gained upon the land to some extent, 

 and the ancient forests that occupied the low grounds were sub- 

 merged. At this stage the land would appear to have stood at 

 very much the same level as at present. Doubtless the loss of 

 land would tell upon the climate of the maritime districts, and 

 we may well believe that the great trees had succumbed before 

 the sea actually overwhelmed them. Mr. Ussher remarks that 

 " the peaty matter so constantly associated with the forest-bed, 

 though it might in some cases be explained by the saturation of 

 an old vegetable soil forming round the trees for centuries, would 

 as a rule impress one with the idea that the forest-tracts were 

 converted into marshes by the formation of gravel- or sand-bars 

 damming back the drainage of the valleys for some time before 

 the sea regained its old cliff-bounds." But as the occurrence of 



