230 Peacock : The Soil Storehouse. 



over, but nothing can truly obliterate it, and if trenches are cut 

 across it where its original outline is intact, though hidden or 

 disguised, there can be no mistaking its former width, depth, 

 and water line. 



There is, however, one notable exception to the rule that no 

 confusion or mixing of periods is found in the soil as produced 

 by nature. Sand dunes, whether seaside or inland, exhibit most 

 marvellous cases of type mixing. This is specially the case with 

 sandhills gathered together on a slope facing the west or south- 

 west. With an uncertain fici<leness the wind cuts away what it 

 piled up ages ago or yesterday, and mixes the whole again in 

 inconceivable confusion. In one case on Manton Warren we 

 found neoliths and British and Roman pottery buried in sand 

 four feet above fragments of soda water bottles, a broken plate, 

 and drinking horn of the last ten years. A sou'wester had cut 

 through an old drift with a narrow and steep-sided gulley, into 

 which a picnic party had slipped and broken the contents of 

 their basket. The upper black soil which they had carried 

 down in their fall was easily distinguished. A fresh blow from 

 the south-west, from a slightly different point, buried the gully 

 in places six feet deep, by drifting in one side and blowing away 

 the light sand from the other. 



As a rule seolian action can always be detected. Where it 

 has gone on for ages it is still shaping the configuration of the 

 land, unless the soil has been planted with trees, or shelter belts 

 have been judiciously drawn across the country. Sand found on 

 western escarpments may always be looked upon as suspicious 

 or doubtful, and the slightest mixture of contents reveals its 

 origin. 



Wherever old soil is being opened, men with antiquarian and 

 scientific tastes should keep a sharp look out for finds. Over 

 and over again most invaluable data have been overlooked or 

 lost. i\s an illustration, the following fact, related to me by 

 Dr. Marten Parry, of Spalding, may be quoted : — In improve- 

 ments made some years ago at that place, earth was carted 

 away and spread as a top dressing on three different fields in 

 the parish. Numbers of coins have been turning up in this 

 redeposited earth ever since. There can be little doubt that 

 without being observed an interesting hoard of ancient Roman 

 money was disturbed and distributed over a wide area. From 

 the regular dispersal through the whole mass of soil removed, it 

 almost seems as if this were not the first time that these coins 

 had been passed over by unobservant eyes. 



Naturalist, 



