the destinies of the western hemisphere to the dominion of an English people; how he was foremost in destroying one Spanish armada in its own harbour of Cadiz, and driving another to its doom on the shores of his country which it was despatched to overwhelm; how so long as Elizabeth reigned he was prominently engaged in every enterprize that was undertaken for the benefit of his country and of mankind; with what wonderful versatility, and energy, and ability, and generosity, and greatness, he ruled, he organized, he wrote, he fought, he planted, he builded, he influenced the world, he played, and played successfully, as many parts as ever one man could or ever did, I must reluctantly leave it to his biographers to relate.

Of his personal appearance, temperament, and strong vitality, we have the somewhat quaint account of Aubrey that "he was a tall, handsome, bold man; but his næve was that he was damnable proud" (having at least something to be proud of), "he had a most remarkable aspect, an exceeding high forehead, long-faced, and sour eie-lidded, a kind of pigge-eie." And one of his earliest biographers relates, describing his execution, that "the large effusion of blood that proceeded from his veins amazed the spectators, who conjectured he had stock enough left of nature to have survived many years, though now nearly fourscore years old!"

With James's accession Sir Walter Raleigh's active achievements may be said to terminate; but not less admirable, perhaps not less influential, were the remaining efforts and example of his life. Not less admirable, for in the calm philosophy and self-restraint which, during the period of a twelve years' unjust and unmerited imprisonment, could divert that irrepressible energy and vitality of his into a channel of authorship, and could set him composing treatises, studying chemistry, experimenting in alchemy, and writing a history of the world, there is something which no active heroism could surpass; and not less influential, inasmuch as those prison-voices of his, the lessons of his pen, the principles which in that wonderful history he promulgated, are distinctly traceable in their influence on the immediate political future of the country, and are actually referred to in the momentous incidents of the immediately subsequent course of English history! So, passing through that vale of misery and persecution, he (though little accustomed to such discipline) used it for a well, and its pools were filled with water, life-bearing, refreshing, and prolific!

The melancholy sequel of Sir Walter's life, his conditional

liberation from prison, his last voyage to Guiana and its disastrous issue; his own illness, his son's death, his trusted captain Keymis's suicide, the accumulated miseries from the midst of which he wrote again and again in despair those tragic words, "My brains are broke," rather tend to heighten the romantic grandeur of his career at its close. True to his trust, he returned home to no doubtful doom: only to be betrayed, falsely accused, and condemned on a futile and unjust pretext. But his work was done, and a marvellous work it was. And the shadow of the scaffold on which, in the year 1618, that great Englishman, our hero of East Devon, perished at Whitehall, forecasts itself ominously, but significantly, over the spot on which, just thirty years after, the son of his persecutor perished by a similar doom, and seems to reach on in its retributive influence even to that time when, seventy years later, from the same spot, the last monarch of the House of Stuart ignominiously took flight (never to return) from the throne and kingdom of England!

SUBMERGED FOREST AND MAMMOTH TEETH

AT SIDMOUTH.

BY P. O. HUTCHINSON.

(Read at Sidmouth, July, 1873.)

THE boisterous weather and stormy seas that prevailed throughout the greater part of last winter very much altered the appearance of Sidmouth beach. The shingle, gravel, and sand were so thoroughly cleared away, that reefs of rocks and beds of clay were in various places laid bare, which had never been seen before within the memory of living man. This effect was more particularly apparent at the west end of the beach. The clay which was found under the sea-sand was of a tough unctuous nature, below which was a stratum of river or freshwater gravel, succeeded downwards in turn by more clay, and finally by yellow clay and angular hill flints. In the freshwater gravel and clay the stumps of many trees seemed to have fastened their roots. The tops of these stumps attracted attention by appearing above the sand. It did not occur to me to note down their exact situations until after some of them had been rooted up, and some others covered again by the shingle. I therefore only fixed the places of six or eight. They lay scattered irregularly outside the Esplanade wall, some opposite the Fort Field, some in front of Fort Cottage, and others further westward. One of them, the most easterly, and perhaps the largest, was outside the Fort Field, and lay sixty feet from the Esplanade wall; the second, counting in a westerly direction, was forty-five feet from it, and fifty-seven feet from the wall; the third was forty-eight feet from the wall; the fourth was five feet further west, and forty-two from the wall; and the fifth, which was the last in this group whose site I ascertained, was twenty feet further west, and fifty-one outside the wall. There were several others which I saw, some erect, and some lying down; and I remarked that of the prostrate ones, their heads inclined to the eastward.

The most westerly, which I have represented in this drawing, I saw rooted up, and I produce specimens of the wood. I also produce specimens of the most easterly of these trees, which I have above spoken of as number one. This number one was more particularly examined at low water on the 31st of last January. It was believed by some persons that these trees were only loose stumps that had been washed up by the waves and buried in the gravel, whilst others asserted that they stood upright and occupied the same places as when they were growing. To set this question at rest, men were directed to excavate round the one indicated. This examination was satisfactory in two or three points. It showed that the stump was standing quite upright; that the tree had been one of large growth, the boll apparently having been full two feet in diameter; that it had several roots radiating from it in different directions; one, for example, towards the southwest, about seven feet long, and six inches in diameter; another tending to the south-east, about the same size, and eight feet long; and one or two others, knotty and crooked, running westward and northward. They seemed to have fastened themselves in the blue clay; but on digging down below their level, yellow clay and angular white flints were brought up. The stump was short, having been worn off a little above the radiation of the roots.

The remains of these trees are covered at high tide by about eight feet of water; and I need scarcely say that the trees could not have grown in their present situation, with the waves of the sea rolling over them. Considerable changes in the relative levels of land and water must have taken place. There have always existed traditions that on this coast the sea has been, and still is, gradually encroaching upon the land; and such traditions are found uniformly to prevail all the way down to the Land's End, and to extend to the Scilly Isles. Submerged forests, however, are by no means new or unknown along the coast of South Devon and of Cornwall. There are traces of one at the bottom of Tor Bay, some forty feet below the surface of the sea; of another in Falmouth Harbour, where the submergence has amounted to sixty-seven feet; of another in Mount's Bay; and our able member, Mr. Pengelly, at page 127 of the third volume of the Transactions, has given a very interesting account of a submerged forest at Blackpool, near Dartmouth, in which many points observed there closely resemble most of the particulars noticed at Sidmouth. Such, for instance, as the dark slate-colour clay, worn into furrows, lying at right-angels to the line of the coast, but

coincident with the flux and reflux of the waves; and the reddish or pink colour of some of the wet wood.

As a geological feature in the case, it may be remarked that in the bottom of the valley of Sidmouth there lies a bed of drift or alluvium, attaining in some places a thickness of twenty feet, and composed of sand, gravel, marl or clay, and sub-angular flints. Through this thick bed the river Sid has cut its channel; and as the river approached the sea, it wandered from right to left and back again, as rivers often do, and widening out at last into a broad estuary. If we go a mile up the river, through the Salcombe fields and a little beyond, we see large banks of earth, descending like giant steps, and facing each other on each side of the stream. These are the old banks of the river. The eastern series may be observed to go down through the meadows, near Salcombe House, and join the cliff before reaching the mouth. The western branch descends through the glebe lands to the town, where it is in a great degree lost. It crosses the High Street, however, just above Mill Street, so called, and passes behind the houses on the western side of the street, so that Church Lane is on the top of the bank, but the houses are at the bottom, where the river once ran. In short, strange as it may appear, all the old town of Sidmouth is built in what was formerly the bed of the river. Working onwards towards the sea, I may remark that the churchyard is just on the top of the bank or bed of alluvium. Chapel Street, Western Town, is on the top of it; but the chapel of the Independents is beneath. It passes by the pump, and then comes out into the Fort Field, just below Denby Place. Crossing the lower corner of the Fort Field, where it has been somewhat obliterated within my memory, it goes immediately behind Fort Cottage, and terminates at the point where the old fort stood. The surface of the Fort Field, then, is on the top of the bank, but Fort Cottage stands below, in the bed of the estuary.

The dark colour clay in which the trees grew was found opposite the estuary, where it appears to have been tinged by the decayed vegetable matter brought down by the river. Although the clay was seen under the sea-beach beyond the line of the estuary, further westward, it was not tinged in the same way, but was red like the cliffs, being in fact beyond the reach of the colouring matter. The roots of the trees had fixed themselves in the blue or dark clay, which bore the appearance of having been mud settled at the bottom of a pond or other body of still water. As the majority of these stumps had not been displaced by the waves, it seems reasonable to