476 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



the coasts of Scania. 1 The chief point of interest in all these 

 beaches is the appearance of peat and freshwater beds which 

 occur underneath banks and ridges of gravel and sand. These 

 latter are unquestionably beach-accumulations, as is proved by 

 the more or less abundant presence of rolled shells and shell- 

 fragments belonging to familiar marine forms. 



Peat occurs under similar circumstances upon the opposite 

 shores of Denmark, as in Jutland, and the Islands of Funen, 

 Zealand, Moen, and Bornholm. On the west coast of Schleswig 

 submarine peat is found at a depth of 30 feet below the present 

 shore -line, and on the shores of Holstein and Hanover like 

 phenomena make their appearance. According to Forchhammer 2 

 these peat-mosses indicate in certain regions a depression, and 

 in others an elevation of the land. A line drawn from the 

 middle of Mssumfjord in Jutland south-east to Nyborg in 

 Funen, and passing south of Moen and Bornholm, marks out 

 two regions in which Forchhammer thought the buried peat- 

 beds tell different tales. South of this line, he says, they lie 

 invariably below the present sea-level, and thus indicate a 

 recent submergence of the land ; to the north, however, the 

 raised-beaches occurring at low levels give evidence of a recent 

 movement in the opposite direction. 



Upon the Prussian shores of the Baltic peat occurs at and 

 below the sea-level, as at Gute Herberge near Danzig, where at 

 four feet above the sea we find peat which varies in thickness 

 from half-a-foot up to six feet. At Scharfenort the peat lies 

 under sixteen feet of sand, and in the neighbourhood of Zipplau, 

 at 20 feet over the sea, the following section is seen : — 3 



Ft. Ins. 



Peaty soil 6 



Peat 9 



Clay, containing in places peat and decayed wood 4 6 

 Peat 10 



1 "Om Skanes nivafdrandringar." — Op. cit, Band i. p. 281. 



2 "Om den forandrede Vandhojde ved de danske Kyster." — Nordisk Univer- 

 sitets-tidshrift for 1856. 



3 Neuerste Schriften der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Danzig, Bd. iv. 

 Heft iii., 1850. 



