BRITISH POSTGLACIAL 6- RECENT DEPOSITS. 461 



and sand, containing a rich variety of shells belonging to species 

 that are still common to British seas. In these shell-beds flint 

 implements of Neolithic types have been obtained in large 

 numbers, especially at Kilroot, on the coast of Belfast Lough. 

 In other places similar finds have been met with, as in the 

 raised-beaches of Carlingford Bay. Again, on the coasts of 

 Meath and Dublin remains of kitchen-middens, with traces of 

 fireplaces, have been detected in such positions as to show that 

 at the time the shells were being gradually heaped up by the 

 coast-dwellers of Neolithic times, the land stood relatively at a 

 lower leveL The upper beach appears to be likewise pretty 

 well developed in some places, and it has also yielded flint 

 implements and other traces of man's presence. 1 



The great peat-bogs of the interior have almost everywhere 

 yielded relics of the forests of postglacial times. Mr. Kinahan 

 says that " usually the roots and trunks of the trees under the 

 peat or in the lowest strata are principally those of the oak and 

 yew, as if, prior to the growth of the peat, the low country was 

 a vast forest of these trees." 2 Higher up in the bogs, at a dis- 

 tance of 4 to 12 feet above the oak-trees, occurs a second layer 

 of stumps and trunks, consisting chiefly of pine. And this 

 upper forest is in like manner buried under peat. In the low- 

 land bogs of the west of Ireland both the forest-layers occa- 

 sionally consist of pines, and the same is the case in many of 

 the bogs of the mountainous districts, as if in such places, Mr. 

 Kinahan remarks, there had been two distinct ages of deal 

 forests. According to the same geologist, the succession of 

 changes which these facts attest is as follows : — 1st, There was 

 a time when great forests of oak and yew covered the country, 

 the oak growing on the hills up to a height of 400 feet or there- 

 about above the sea ; while at higher levels deal was the pre- 

 vailing timber, flourishing at greater heights than now, as is 



1 For accounts of raised-beaches, see Hull's Physical Geology and Geography of 

 Ireland, p. 107 ; Kinahan, op. cit. p. 251 ; Brit. Assoc. Rep., 1834, p. 658 ; 

 1852, p. 43 ; 1872, p. 113 ; 1874, p. 74 ; Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxiv. p. 4 ; 

 Geol. Mag. , vols. iv. p. 8 ; x. p. 453 ; Dec. ii. vol. i. p. 210. 



2 Op. cit. p. 268. The details that follow are taken from the same work. 



