THE SUBMERGED PEAT AND FOREST BEDS 

 OF THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. 



BY JOSEPH SINEL. 



All who are acquainted with the physical aspects of the 

 Channel Islands are aware that on many parts of their shores, 

 and especially in their flat and sandy bays, there are, beneath 

 the sand, large extents of firm black peaty soil, in which 

 stumps of trees — some of large size — remain, still rooted, in 

 the position in which they grew. 



This forest bed has attracted the attention of writers of 

 all times, and manifold and varied are the theories that have 

 been propounded to accouut for it. The legends and tradi- 

 tions of the monks of St. Michel with regard to it are too 

 well known to need repetition, and too evidently imaginary to 

 need refutation. But serious historians have arrived at con- 

 clusions, and expressed opinions, upon the subject which are 

 as far from fact as are the legends of the monks. 



Even in a work so recent as twenty odd years ago, the 

 Rev. Mons. Noury, in his Geologic de Jersey, considers a 

 portion at least, of this same bed, to be the remains of a 

 manorial estate in St. Ouen's Bay, which succumbed to the 

 waves in the fourteenth century ; and certain dues, still paid 

 by residents in the parish for " droits de porcage " (right of 

 feeding hogs) or " de percage" (right of way) are said to 

 refer to the said ground. 



Still further, antiquarians claim to have found implements 

 of bronze and Roman coins in the peat of this forest. Now 

 all this is error, but error based upon such grounds as to render 

 it very pardonable, as we shall presently see. 



A very remarkable fact, and an inexplicable one is, that 

 of all who have written about this forest and well described it, 

 there is not one who has noticed that it is the loioer of two 

 distinct beds, and that the section of the upper one is clearly 

 visible nearly all along St. Ouen's bay, in the vertical sand- 

 banks. The bed, which is conspicuously black, shows as a 

 horizontal band 10 to 20 inches thick all along the white sand, 

 and this at an elevation of from three to ten feet above the 

 lower bed. The " upper peat," so familiar to well-sinkers and 

 [1909.] 



