crowded with vegetable _debris_, such as small twigs, leaves, and nuts.
There were also numerous prostrate trunks and branches of trees, lying
partly imbedded in the clay, without anything like a prevalent direction.
The trunks varied from six inches to upwards of two feet in diameter. Much
of the wood was found to have a reddish or bright pink hue, when fresh
surfaces were exposed. Some of it, as well as many of the twigs, had almost
become a sort of ligneous pulp, while other examples were firm, and gave a
sharp crackling sound on being broken. Several large stumps projected above
the clay in a vertical direction, and sent roots and rootlets into the soil
in all directions and to considerable distances. It was obvious that the
movement by which the submergence was effected had been so uniform as not
to destroy the approximate horizontality of the old forest ground. One fine
example was noted of a large prostrate trunk having its roots still
attached, some of them sticking up above the clay, while others were buried
in it. Hazelnuts were extremely abundant--some entire, others broken, and
some obviously gnawed.... It has been stated that the forest area reached
the spring-tide low-water line; hence as the greatest tidal range on this
coast amounts to eighteen feet, we are warranted in inferring that the
subsidence amounted to eighteen feet as a minimum, even if we suppose that
some of the trees grew in a soil the surface of which was not above the
level of high water. There is satisfactory evidence that in Torbay it was
not less than forty feet, and that in Falmouth Harbour it amounted to at
least sixty-seven feet."[79]

{336}

On the coast of the Bristol Channel similar deposits occur, as well as
along much of the coast of Wales and in Holyhead Harbour. It is believed by
geologists that the whole Bristol Channel was, at a comparatively recent
period, an extensive plain, through which flowed the River Severn; for in
addition to the evidence of submerged forests there are on the coast of
Glamorganshire numerous caves and fissures in the face of high sea cliffs,
in one of which no less than a thousand antlers of the reindeer were found,
the remains of animals which had been devoured there by bears and hyaenas;
facts which can only be explained by the existence of some extent of dry
land stretching seaward from the present cliffs, but since submerged and
washed away. This plain may have continued down to very recent times