42 
feet. All these passages and caverns were filled with the same Yellow Loam, 
containing fragments of Limestone, Galena, and many bones. Among 
others were four very fine teeth of the Elephant, an immense skull and 
tusks of the Boar, the jaw of an- Elephant with one molar tooth attached, 
part of a tusk, a skull, and four thigh bones and ribs, all belonging to the 
same animal. A full description of all these caves may be seen in Phelps' 
History of Somersetshire. 
It appears that the country south of Bristol and west of the Mendips 
owes its present form and figure to the effects of denudation and wave 
action, combined with the gradual rising of the ground. 
It is, as before said, wonderfully interesting to the thoughtful geolo- 
gist when he examines these low and comparatively recent deposits, lying 
in juxtaposition with older beds formed in the same way, but hardened 
into rocky strata by the lapse of ages, so ancient as to defy their calcu- 
lation. Yet thousands cover their garden walks with the gravel brought 
within their reach by the river action from the interior, and build their 
dwellings with the sand cast up by the waves, without one moment's 
thought at the wondrous code of the simplest yet grandest laws with which 
nature silently but surely works her will. 
A visitor to Weston-super-Mare can wish for no better spot for observa- 
tion. If he will take a boat at low water from the Pier -head, he will see 
the shape and size of the bank of mud formed from the Lias washings to 
the greatest advantage. While sitting in the boat and looking towards 
the town, he will be unable to see the vesseels on the shore on account of 
the high mud bank which intervenes. An observer on the shore or on the 
Pier can form no conception of the curious effect. Thus it is that the 
moorlands south of Bristol are almost entirely composed of deposits, derived 
by denudation of the Lias from the action of waves and rivers. 
The relative changes of level have always been a subject of discussion, 
[n the present day the general opinion is, that the sea is less changeable 
than the land, and that all the great changes on the earth's crust are due 
to some alteration in the disposition of the solid mass of which it is composed. 
It is very singular that many ancient writers— as Ovid, Pythagoras, 
Pliny and Aristotle— should have expressed exactly the same views. A 
remarkable instance occurs in the Roman Geographer Strabo, when 
opposing the opinions of Erabosthenes and Xanthus, as to the cause of 
shells being found at great elevations and distances from the sea. He 
says, 4 ' It is not because the lauds covered by the seas were originally at 
different altitudes, that [the waters have arisen, or subsided, or receded 
