38 



J. D. KENDALL ON THE INTEEGLACIAL DEPOSITS OF 



But, as I have already pointed out, the rootlets from these stocks do 

 not pass down into the underlying Boulder-clay, but are simply 

 imbedded in the neighbouring woody matter. Some of these root- 

 stocks belong to trees which must have been at least 18 inches in 

 diameter ; so that if such trees could have derived their necessary 

 nourishment from a woody soil of this kind, it is perfectly certain 

 they would not have been able to stand in it, because there would 

 be nothing of any weight or tenacity for the roots to lay hold of. 

 The presence of such root-stocks, it seems to me, may bo better 

 explained by supposing them to have been floated to the positions 

 in which we see them. The position in which they now stand is 

 that of notation ; that is to say, a root-stock would be floated and 

 dropped in water with the same side up as when it was growing. 



The inner nature of the shore-deposits being precisely the same 

 as that of the cavernous deposits found at Crossgates is also sug- 

 gestive of drifting ; for clearly the latter are not on the site of an 

 ancient forest, but have been carried to their present resting-place 

 by water. 



The facts presented by these deposits seem to me to have a most 

 important bearing on the question of the formation of coal. We 

 have here similar underclays to those which accompany coal-seams, 

 and the same kind of intercalated clay-bands, both of which, in the 

 case of coal, suggest watery conditions just as much as they do in 

 the deposits under consideration. I think it is just as impossible 

 that trees can have grown in the underclays of coal, which at the 

 time would be soft and incoherent, as that they can have stood in 

 the woody matter of the so-called " submerged forests." The Stig- 

 maria rootlets of the coal may be accounted for in the same manner 

 as the root-stocks which are found in vegetable deposits like that at 

 St. Bees. The trees which have been found rising out of coal-seams 

 and passing into the overlying strata, may be explained by supposing 

 them to have been so loaded at the root when they were deposited 

 that their position of flotation was erect. In this way the whole 

 Coal-measures may have been deposited during a gradual subsidence 

 without any of the periods of cessation demanded by those who hold 

 that coal-seams are the remains of forests which grew in situ* 



On the assumption that the shore-deposits are " submerged forests * 

 of recent age, it has been often held that they indicate a subsidence 

 of the coast ; and writers, in consequence, have had to make the land 

 rise and fall in a very remarkable and erratic manner, when dealing 

 with the phenomena of "raised beaches" on the one hand and 

 " submerged forests " on the other. The view just enunciated sim- 

 plifies matters very considerably, as, according to that, the vegetable 

 deposits on the shore do not necessarily indicate either a rise or a 

 fall of the land in recent times. 



