84 
CHANGE OF SEA LEVEL. 
loimd imbedded. These appearances are 
frequent round the shores of Cornwall and 
Devonshire, the coasts of Great Britain and 
France. The remains are very extensive 
and of common occurrence. The wood is 
oak, elm, alder, pine, and hazel, besides 
underwood and mosses. The numerous 
instances enable us to affirm with certainty j 
as a general position, that in northern i 
Europe the land now beneath the sea level 
in coves, creeks, and bays, has formerly 
sustained a vegetation similar to that which 
now clothes adjacent woodlands, and that 
this land has been depressed beneath the 
waves of the present ocean. The occur¬ 
rence of raised beaches at different heights 
along the same shores, also proves the eleva¬ 
tion at other times of the same so-called 
terra firm a. In the hollow of the cliff 
above may be discerned a line of beach, the 
token of one former level, and deep in the 
sands beneath may be uncovered the traces 
of another. The really constant stable 
element in reference to its position, is 
probably the sea and not the land. 
