32 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
comes the submerged-forest zone, here represented by 
a layer of vegetable debris — of oak, alder, hazel, etc. — 
ranging in thickness from 5 to 14 feet. So great an 
accumulation shows how long the forest age must 
have flourished here. Beneath the forest zone comes 
another sea deposit, a stratum of marine clay, sand, 
and shells, 3 to 5 feet in thickness, indicating a period 
of subsidence prior to the forest age. This zone may 
represent a deposit contemporary with the ballast gravel. 
Beneath the marine deposit comes one of clay with 
stones — rubble drift — a mark of the colder or glacial 
period. It was known, when this excavation was made 
in St Helier's, that flints, pottery, and remains of animals 
of the Neolithic period occurred in the great bed of peat 
representing the forest period. Mr Sinel observed these 
traces of Neolithic man, not only at various depths of the 
peat zone, but also in the upper part of the marine deposit. 
The marine deposit formed the land surface on which 
the submerged forest first grew. ^Men of the Neolithic 
culture were thus in Jersey at the very commencement 
of the forest era. The ancient forest land surface can be 
traced to the coast of France and far into the English 
Channel — to a depth, according to the observations of 
Mr Sinel, of 140 feet. In the earlier part of the 
Neolithic period, Jersey and Guernsey — all the Channel 
Islands — were, like England, joined to the Continent. 
When we come to measure the antiquity of that time we 
must keep in mind the width and depth of the English 
Channel and of the Straits of Dover. They were carved 
out of Neolithic lands. When we suppose such changes 
have happened in eight thousand or ten thousand years, 
we seem to set time, with all the forces she usually 
commands, a task beyond her power. 
The fortune which attended the sinking of the docks 
at Tilbury did not follow the excavation in St Helier's. 
Mr Sinel discovered no remains of a Neolithic man either 
in or below the forest zone ; but in a small island — La 
Motte, or the green island — on the south coast of Jersey 
and three miles to the east of St Helier's, remains of 
