FLINT FLAKES OF DEVON AND CORNWALL. 
179 
memory of the present generation. These have disappeared, 
and the sea flows over them some fathoms deep, and yet we 
know of no alteration in the respective levels of land and water 
along the rocky portions of the coast, or other change by which 
we might recognise any subsidence of the land. 
At the period of the general elevation that raised the ancient 
sea beaches to the height of thirty feet above the present sea 
level, the sea bottom around our coasts must have shallowed to 
the extent of four or five fathoms, an elevation that must have 
brought a large portion above the height of the highest tide. 
It is the old sea bottom, which, in favourable spots, became 
arboreal and fertile, that has continued to resist the destructive 
wash of the sea in the shelter of our creeks and bays until the 
period of man, that we see in the submerged forests around our 
coasts ; and, therefore, as I before observed, if not in all places, 
certainly in Barnstaple Bay the encroachment of the sea is due 
to the destruction of the superficial soil of the district, and not 
to the subsidence of the land. 
Assuming this to be true, of which I retain no doubt, it 
follows that the flints found in the clay must have been depo- 
sited since the latest downward movement, if any such has ever 
occurred upon our Devonshire and Cornish coasts, of which the 
submerged forests are supposed to afford evidence. 
The next point of enquiry that suggests itself, is the relation 
that exists between the flint flakes found at Northam and at 
Croyde with those that lie scattered over the Western promon- 
tory. The places at which they have been found throughout 
Devon and Cornwall are sufficiently numerous to induce one to 
believe that they may be found to exist universally throughout 
the two counties. Around Barnstaple, in an area of twenty 
miles’ diameter, they appear to be abundant. They have been 
found at Hartland Point; in some considerable numbers, on 
the moorland round Dosmare pool ; at the Stepper Point, near 
Padstow ; in the Scilly Isles ; in the neighbourhood of Penzance, 
Mr. Buffer describes them as scattered over the surface, from 
St. Just to Tol-Pedn-Penwith ; on Crusa Down, in the Lizard 
district; on the Plymouth Hoe, in the peat at Shaw Bridge, 
as well as at Princestown, where some beautifully worked speci- 
mens have been found with others, by the prisoners, on the 
surface of the gravelly soil, over which had accumulated about 
six feet of peat ; at Cornwood, on the moorland ; and on Wind- 
mill Hill, near Brixham. In all these localities they lie in 
the surface soil of the country; and, as far as there is evidence 
to show, must have belonged to the same common sera. 
They have also been found in a basin on the top of the Maen 
rock in the parish of Constantine, near Falmouth. All these 
appear to me to differ from some that I obtained from an 
