Coffp:y and Puakger — The Anfrim Raised Beach, 165 



on Cornwall, Devon, and West Somerset, in Q. J. G. S., xxi., 1865) a 

 similar succession, narrates his own jSnding of worked flints in 

 angular detritus and clayey land-wash underlying submerged forest- 

 beds in Devonshire.^ 



There is, indeed, in the British Islands widespread evidence of 

 Glacial emergence, a high land-level extending into post-Glacial times, 

 and post-Glacial submergence. It is the sharp Keolithic uprise that 

 is the distinctive character of the Belfast-Forth-Mersey area. 



In this connexion it is to be noted that Munro,- from a survey of 

 the European evidence, concludes that along a line passing from 

 the north of Ireland through central Scotland and Sweden, the land 

 lias risen during the jSTeolithic period ; while in the south of England, 

 Brittany, extreme south of Sweden, southern Baltic, and central 

 Europe, the land has been gradually sinking during that same period. 

 Mellard Reade, on the other hand, believes he finds in Belgium^ 

 records of a series of oscillations closely corresponding with those of 

 Lancashire. So that the impression produced by a rapid survey of the 

 evidence is that these recent slight fluctuations are of an uneven and 

 local character. 



This conclusion, it may be pointed out, has more than a local 

 interest, bearing, as it does, on the question as to whether such changes 

 in the relative level of sea and land are actually due to a displacement 

 of the level of the ocean or of the land-masses. The evidence which 

 we have had under review lends no support to the contention of Suess* 

 that these changes are due to a variability of the sea-level, but tends 

 to confirm the view lately restated by Sir A. Geikie that " the changes 

 of level of which our islands furnish such signal illustrations, have 

 been primarily due, not to any oscillations of the surface of the ocean, 

 but to movements of the terrestrial crust connected with the slow 

 cooling and contraction of our globe. 



1 " Early Man in Britain," pp. 247-248. 1880. 



- Robert Mimro : " On the Relation between Archteology, Chronology, and Land 

 Oscillations in Post-glacial Times." Archceological Journal, Iv., pp. 259-285. 

 1898. 



Q. J. G. S., liv., pp. 575-581. 1898. 

 * Das Antlitz derErde." 



^ "Anniversary Address," 1904, already quoted. 



