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Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



the uplift was completed, Bronze Age man held possession of the 

 land. But as the assigning of a later date to the beaches as land 

 surfaces is usually founded on negative evidence — the apparent absence 

 on or in them of traces of earlier periods — we find no testimony that 

 effectually defeats our positive evidence of a N^eolithic age for the 

 whole movement of emergence. 



Over an area, then, including northern Ireland, the southern half 

 of Scotland, and northern England, the land-oscillations during post- 

 Glacial times appear to have been practically identical. Outside of 

 this area, to the southward, the evidence points to a high land-level in 

 early post-Glacial times, followed by submergence, as in the area just 

 defined; but the sharp l^eolitliic uplift, which formed the "25-foot 

 beach " in the area mentioned, appears to die out rapidly northward 

 and southward. To the southward, the evidence points to a continuous 

 or intermittent submergence since early post-Glacial times, the land 

 having at no time been appreciably lower than at present. There is 

 as yet but little evidence available wherewith to afiix dates to tlie 

 phases of this submergence ; but at Southampton it appears to be 

 satisfactorily established that the high post-Glacial land surface 

 endured until Neolithic times {ante, p. 164), and at Minehead in 

 Devon, the earliest post-Glacial bed is a land deposit containing 

 worked flints {tmte, p. 165). 



