From Essex across to Wales, from
Wales to the aestuary of the Clyde, this fact has been verified again
and again. And in the search for these shells, a fresh fact, and a
most startling one, was discovered. They are to be found not only in
the clay of the lowlands, but at considerable heights up the hills,
showing that, at some time or other, these hills have been submerged
beneath the sea.
Let me give one example, which any tourist into Wales may see for
himself. Moel Tryfaen is a mountain over Carnarvon. Now perched on
the side of that mountain, fourteen hundred feet above the present
sea-level, is an ancient sea-beach, five-and-thirty feet thick, lying
on great ice-scratched boulders, which again lie on the mountain
slates. It was discovered by the late Mr. Trimmer, now, alas! lost
to Geology. Out of that beach fifty-seven different species of
shells have been taken; eleven of them are now exclusively Arctic,
and not found in our seas; four of them are still common to the
Arctic seas and to our own; and almost all the rest are northern
shells.
Fourteen hundred feet above the present sea: and that, it must be
understood, is not the greatest height at which such shells may be
found hereafter. For, according to Professor Ramsay, drift of the
same kind as that on Moel Tryfaen is found at a height of two
thousand three hundred feet.
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