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SUBMERGED PEAT AND FOREST BEDS. 



no change in its aspect, although when it was a living tree the 

 sea was far away, after which the whole land subsided until 

 the waters covered the trunk to a depth of twenty-five or 

 thirty feet and buried it under five feet of silt ; when I 

 remember that subsequently the land rose until it formed part 

 of a plain on which another sort of vegetation grew ; and 

 that the land has yet again subsided, and the waves laid bare 

 the same old dead tree, as far as soil is concerned, but covered 

 it at high tide by thirty feet of water. Reviewing all this in 

 my mind and remembering that " Nature does not move by 

 bounds," I ask myself, How long is it since this tree was 

 growing ? Were a friend to suggest 30,000 years, I should 

 not be able to discuss or to demonstrate, but I should feel that 

 even his large claim was but too moderate. 



Professor Geikie, who has treated of these subjects in 

 such magnificent manner, suggests that considering the cli- 

 matic as well as other changes that have occurred since those 

 very remote times, it is rather to the physicist and the astro- 

 nomer than to the geologist that we must look for that more 

 precise chronology which we may hopefully expect to find 

 some day established. 



It is pleasant at times to lay aside the dry calculations of 

 science and to let fancy take a flight and reconstruct as it 

 were, to the imagination, the scenes that greeted the vision of 

 the Neolithic man of these lands. When the curtain rises, 

 say in the middle of the great forest period, probably 30,000 

 years ago, we observe a level or at most a slightly undulating 

 plain stretching away for 300 miles to the west. This plain 

 is densely wooded except for its two or three miles wide 

 margin, which consists of marsh and blown sand. A line of 

 great sand dunes forms its boundary and marks the edge of 

 the Atlantic ocean. These islands, already shaped by the 

 seas and carved by glacier and stream, have their present 

 form, only somewhat more extended in height and in area. 

 They stand as rocky elevations in the sea of forest. A large 

 river, the Greater Seine, runs past the north of Guernsey, 

 and on its far side the forest spreads as far as the shores of 

 Cornwall. A stream, the Greater Ay, runs from the Cotentin, 

 between the banks of Les Bceufs on the south, and the 

 Ecrelios, Dirouelles and Paternosters on the north, and passes 

 to the southward of Guernsey to join the Greater Seine. 

 Between Jersey and the Minquier rocks runs the river Titus 

 of Ptolemy, and a larger river, the Greater Ronce, flows 

 between the Minquier rocks and the Cotes du Nord, to join 

 the Greater Seine near its estuary. 



