EEVIETVS. 
479 
position of the rocks to be naturally low, and that though there have been 
promontories of rock at Dingle, ^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 Forest- 
bed resting on sandstone. In 1829, a section was exposed in excavating 
at the Old Dock and gave 
Hish-water mark. 
19 feet AVater. 
3 feet Dock Silt. 
"White Saud. 
6 feet Blue Silt. 
1 foot Peat or Forest bed, w ith trunks of trees. 
10 feet Blue Silt, with stags' horns. 
1 foot Peat or Foi est-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 
Talley 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 tiie 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, 
incrustcd 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 
Sos primigenius, B. 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- 
