DRIFTS OF THE VALE OF CLWTD. 



99 



are of any recent age down to the present day ; there is no evidence 

 of any of them being of greater antiquity than the Morfa Bhuddlan 

 beds ; yet it is probable that they were always represented along 

 this shore, and played their part in aiding or checking the changes 

 which submergences or elevation from time to time tended to 

 produce. 



There are traditions and some other suggestions of there having 

 been such changes within historic times, though history is silent 

 about them. In the churchyard at Abergele there is a sandstone slab 

 bearing this inscription : — " Here there lies in the churchyard of 

 Michael a man who had his dwelling three miles to the north." 



The sea is now wiihin a mile; but whatever may be the interpre- 

 tation of this statement, whether he was a man who lived on board 

 ship, or whatever other explanation can be offered, it does seem to 

 me improbable that changes of that kind and extent can have taken 

 place along that coast within the period that the character of the 

 inscription would allow us to assign to it, or even since Abergele 

 church was built. 



The traditions of change in the coast-line may, however, be 

 founded on correct observation. Yery likely, for instance, a tongue 

 of drift ran far out by Llandrillo ynrhos, the destruction of which 

 affected the denudation along the shore further east. Very likely 

 there have been some changes of level in comparatively recent times, 

 and the so-called submerged forests near Prestatyn and Pensarn 

 and at the west end of Colwyn Bay are most easily explained on the 

 supposition of a small subsidence *. But we must remember that 

 trees now grow in the marshes behind the sand-dunes on ground 

 over which the sea would rush in high tides, were it not for the 

 protecting barrier, and that by the washing out of sand below such 

 forest-beds they often get still further lowered, while some supposed 

 forests are mere stumps of trees drifted out to sea and generally 

 floated right side up as they are ballasted by the earth and stones 

 caught in the roots. (See Potter, Trans. Liverpool Geol. Soc. 

 1868-9 ; Whitaker, Mem. Geol. Survey, Guide to Geol. Lond., 4th 

 edition, pp. 77, 78 ; East Essex, p. 18 ; Geol. Ipswich, p. 97 ; Proc. 

 Geol. Assoc. viii. p. 137. See also Pep. Brit. Assoc. 1885, pp. 442- 

 465.) 



The peat of the East Anglian fenland is, in the main, of Neolithic 

 age f, though some of the earlier deposits associated with the peat 

 contain paleolithic animals, for these have been shown to be 

 probably only a few derivative specimens from the older gravel-beds 

 on which the peat rested. 



So the peat and silt of the estuary of the Clwyd have yielded nothing 

 older than the Bos longifrons and Cervus elaphus. The Morfa 

 Bhuddlan beds may date from Neolithic times to the present day. 

 Pew short rivers running straight out from the hills to the sea 

 without the intervention of low-terraced lands near the mouth 



* Mellard Reade observes that the last movement of the land in Lancashire 

 was downwards (Proc. Liverpool Geol. Soc. 1871-2, p. 437). 

 t ' Cambridge Review,' 1886, p. 366. 



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