s, on which are situated the Faroe Islands and
Iceland, and which stretches across to Greenland. In the North Channel
between Ireland and Scotland, and in the Minch between the outer Hebrides
and Skye, are a series of hollows in the sea-bottom from 100 to 150 fathoms
deep. These correspond exactly to the points between the opposing highlands
where the greatest accumulations of ice would necessarily occur during the
glacial epoch, and they may well be termed submarine lakes, of exactly the
same nature as those which occur in similar positions on land.

_Proofs of Former Elevation--Submerged Forests._--What renders Britain
particularly instructive as an example of a recent continental island is
the amount of direct evidence that exists, of several distinct kinds,
showing that the land has been sufficiently elevated (or the sea depressed)
to unite it with the Continent,--and this at a very recent period. The
first class of evidence is the existence, all round our coasts, of the
remains of submarine forests often extending far below the present
low-water mark. Such are the submerged forests near Torquay in Devonshire,
and near Falmouth in Cornwall, both containing stumps of trees in their
natural position rooted in the soil, with deposits of peat, branches, and
nuts, and often with remains of insects and other land animals. These occur
in very different conditions and situations, and some have been explained
by changes in the height of the tide, or by pebble banks shutting out the
tidal waters from estuaries; but there are numerous examples to which such
hypotheses cannot apply, and which can only be explained by an actual
subsidence of the land (or rise of the sea-level) since the trees grew.

We cannot give a better idea of these forests than by quoting the following
account by Mr. Pengelly of a visit to one which had been exposed by a
violent storm on the coast of Devonshire, at Blackpool near Dartmouth:--
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"We were so fortunate as to reach the beach at spring-tide low-water, and
to find, admirably exposed, by far the finest example of a submerged forest
which I have ever seen. It occupied a rectangular area, extending from the
small river or stream at the western end of the inlet, about one furlong
eastward; and from the low-water line thirty yards up the strand. The lower
or seaward portion of the forest area, occupying about two-thirds of its
entire breadth, consisted of a brownish drab-coloured clay, which was