I.—Oscillations of Level along our South Coast since the Human Period

Extract

In the latest number of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society there is a description by Mr. D. Pigeon, F.G.S., of recent discoveries in the submerged Forest of Torbay. The paper is highly interesting, and records many facts, valuable alike to the geologist and archæologist. But the inferences he draws from them in opposition to Mr. Pengelly, though not altogether unchallenged in the discussion of his paper, were not contradicted as emphatically as they might have been. As I take interest in, and have observed signs of upheaval and depression along our coast-line, and believe that scarcely any part of the coast is at rest, I beg leave to protest against this latest of several attempts to show, that remains of forests, now beneath the sea-level, originally grew at the levels they now occupy. We know that it is possible that forests might grow at a lower level than the sea until a protecting dam gave way and they became overwhelmed; but I would ask whether there is any example of such growing anywhere round the coasts of Great Britain to-day, and whether there is anything to lead to the belief that there were, at the epochs of these submerged forests, any physical conditions that rendered it more probable that forests might have grown below high-water mark along the coasts, then than now. To admit that there were, would admit a change of some kind, presumably of level, which is what I maintain. My own idea is that the physiography, of the south coast at least, is entirely opposed to the growth of forests behind dykes below the sea-level, and that the only probable explanation of their present position is a subsidence of the area on which they grew. This seems so self-evident that I should hardly have thought any other view could have been supported. The conclusion I take most particular exception to is this: “That a coast which has remained stationary for the last 2000 years should have made such active use of the preceding twelve or twenty centuries for the purposes of oscillation, is rather hard of belief.” In the first place there is no sort of evidence that the coast was stationary for 2000 years, and in the second, were it so, it would not present any reason to my mind why evidence of the occurrence of oscillations in the 2000 years preceding should be rejected.