MARINE BIOLOGICAL STATIOX AT POET ERIX. 67 



floods. Tliese were associated with, a jaw-bone believed by 

 Professor Busk to have been that of a red deer. 



Measured in years, the formation of these forests and 

 peat beds must have spread over a very long period — a 

 time of gradual upheaval by no means confined to this 

 small area, but part of a general movement, to be after- 

 wards followed by a depression of the land throughout 

 Great Britain and Ireland, which carried the ancient 

 forests down in some places to below the present sea-level. 



The 10-fathom line around our coast has been con- 

 sidered to be roughly the boundary of the land at the time 

 of greatest elevation. This forest growth has been shown 

 to belong to the Xeolitkic, or later stone age, by the 

 presence of animals first domesticated, and introduced 

 to our country by Xeolithic man, as well as by the absence 

 of the extinct mammalia characteristic of the previous 

 periods. The climate would be necessarily affected by the 

 enlarged area of land, the extended water-system and the 

 growth of forests, and must have been generally more 

 damp, with greater extremes between summer heat and 

 winter cold. It was probably a good deal more favourable 

 to the formation of peat-beds than the conditions seen at 

 the present day.* Associated with the silt at the bottom 

 of these peat-beds we have records of the Great Deer 

 usually known as the " Irish Elk," Cervus gigant&us (for- 

 merly called Megaceros hibernicus), a noble animal (see 

 fig. 3) with a spread of antlers extending to over 9 feet. 



* There is reason to believe that during historic times, since the 

 disappearance of the ancient Neolithic forests, trees have been few 

 and of scanty growth over the greater part of the island. Thus, 

 Chaloner (1656) referring to the former plenty as seen in the bog-oak. 

 &c, speaks of the Island as "now destitute of Wood, and of the 

 Plantations which some feiv have made about their houses " (Manx 

 Soc, Vol. X., p. 8). In this connection Dr. Harold Bailey, of Port 

 Erin, has pointed out that there are remarkably few wood-feeding 

 beetles in the island, and that even these may have been introduced 

 of recent years with timber from the main land. 



