REVIEWS. 



479 



position of the rocks to be naturally low, and that though there have been 

 promontories of rock at Dingle, JN T ew Brighton, and Eastham, as also of 

 boulder-clay at Egremont and other places, these never extended any 

 great distance. In most places the land slopes gradually towards the 

 water, from which Mr. Morton concludes that a wide low valley existed at 

 the end of the glacial epoch, and considers his conclusion confirmed by 

 the existence of the submarine forest beds so frequently described by au- 

 thors. The sections and strata prove, he thinks, that a subsidence of about 

 fifty feet has taken place, there being several successive old forests or land 

 surfaces, with silt between the oldest of them, overlying the boulder- clay. 

 Along the coast from Crosby to Liverpool there are indications of the 

 " forest-bed " which dips considerably in the valley of the Mersey, being 

 thirty-five feet below high-water mark at the North Docks, near Bootle, 

 where the section in descending order is — Sand, Blue Silt, Peat, or Eorest- 

 bed resting on sandstone. In 1829, a section was exposed in excavating 

 at the Old Dock and gave 



High-water mark. 

 19 feet Water. 

 3 feet Dock Silt. 



White Sand. 

 6 feet Blue Silt. 



1 foot Peat or Forest bed, with trunks of trees. 

 10 feet Blue Silt, with stags' horns. 

 1 foot Peat or Forest-bed, with trunks of trees. 

 = 40 feet. 

 Sandstone. 



Other sections are given, some of which may still be visited. The whole 

 area has now been converted into docks, it being during their construction 

 that the opportunities for examination occurred, for ten years ago vessels 

 sailed over the place, and now are moored in deep water there. It will be 

 thus seen, Mr. Morton says, " that the pool occupies an ancient valley, 

 the bottom and sloping sides of which were covered with trees." " The 

 valley ofttimes became filled with water, and a deposit of mud formed over 

 the bed of the pool, ton feet thick in the middle, and gradually thinning 

 off at the sides ;" " originally the submarine forest bed at the bottom of the 

 valley would have been connected with the present surface of the land, 

 but the continuation has been broken away by denudation along the sides 

 of the pool." " The trees grew immediately above the boulder-clay, their 

 roots and two or three feet of their trunks remaining in situ until torn up 

 by the excavators." In the silt over the forest-bed a human skull and bones, 

 incrusted with zoophytes and barnacles, were found by Mr. T. J. Moore, 

 the Curator of the Liverpool Museum, and described by him in the tenth 

 volume of the ' Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and 

 Cheshire.' Amongst the mammalian remains were bones and horns of 

 JBos primigenius, JB. longifrons, Cervus elaphus, and rib-bones of a ceta- 

 cean. The Dove Point portion is very interesting, and the forest-bed may 

 there be examined, — the old land-surfaces one over the other " indicating 

 pauses in the subsidence, and each covered by accumulations of silt depo- 

 sited during the gradual sinking of the land." The lowest forest-bed here 

 is eight feet below the level of an ordinary spring tide. Approaching the 

 embankment from Dove Point, the two lower forest-beds gradually amal- 

 gamate, and then are both merged into one, the three feet of intervening silt 

 having entirely thinned out. " The surface of the boulder-clay upon which 

 the lowest bed rests at Dove Point forms a depression ; a gradual subsi- 



