182 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



tween high- and low-water, is a bed of turf "about a foot thick, with 

 the trunks of trees, chiefly ash and fir, standing upright, and their 

 roots running down into the alluvial blue sandy marl. These roots 

 may be traced for several feet, and it is plain that ' here they lived 

 and died.'" Mr. Gumming states, in 1848, that he has in his pos- 

 session one of these tree-stumps, hearing upon it " marhs of a hatchet ;" 

 and he further records, on what he considers unquestionable testi- 

 mony, that during a violent storm in 1827, the sands at a spot a little 

 to the M^est of fStrandhall were swept away, and a vast number of 

 trunks, some erect and others overthrown towards the sea, were 

 exposed, and that " the foundations of a primitive huf'' were laid hare, 

 together luith some ''antique, uncoiith-loolcing instruments'' These 

 facts, taken in connection with the traditions respecting the presence 

 of the sea at Port-e-chee, are of the highest importance in their bear- 

 ings upon the great question of the antiquity of the human race, and 

 would, if properly authenticated, establish the fact of great physical 

 changes having passed over the island during the human epoch. The 

 subject is certainly deserving of further investigation. 



Additional evidence of these successive uprises of the land exists 

 at difierent parts of the coast in the shape of ancient beaches and 

 beds of gravel at various elevations. Good examples of both may be 

 found in the neighbourhood of Douglas. The old town itself is built 

 upon the last-raised beach, and in digging for building or other pur- 

 poses, a considerable thickness of fine sand is passed through, identical 

 with that now found on the adjacent shore, and often containing 

 fragments of bones much decomposed. Behind this most recent of 

 the raised beaches there rises to a considerable height all round the 

 bay a much more ancient one, in some places consisting of the under- 

 lying slaty schists, and in others — near Castle Mona, for instance — 

 of thick beds of fine sand, similar to that composing the present 

 beach. 



In the interior and in the north of the island, particularly at St. 

 John's, between Douglas and Peel, and at Ballaugh, between Peel 

 and Eamsey, are extensive marl-beds, in which fragments, and occa- 

 sionally whole skeletons, of the great Irish — or rather Manx elk, as it 

 is asserted tliat the first specimen of this gigantic animal was disco- 

 vered here, and not m Ireland — are found. The most perfect speci- 

 men known was found in a marl-pit at Ballaugh, in 1819, at a depth 

 of eighteen feet, and was presented by the Duke of Athol to the 

 University of Edinburgh ; a magnificent head and horns from the 

 same place is now in the British Museum. These marls are full of 

 fresh-water shells of existing species, and occasionally become a true 

 shell-marl. 



Besting upon these marls, and filling up the hollows of most of the 

 upland valleys, arc extensive peat-bogs of great thickness. They 

 contain great quantities of trunks of trees, principally pines and 

 oaks, proving tlie fact — of which, indeed, we have frequent notice in 

 IManx history— of the woody character of the island in former times. 

 This peat, owing to tlie want of coal in the island, is of great value, 

 and is very extensively used by the natives as fuel. 



