drawn a picture* of the great level of the Fens which we heartily commend to the reader's attention, especially if he is fond of antiquity, for Mr. Clarke describes the great tract in question as being of far more interest than the danish peat bogs or the french gravel cuttings. Indeed it may be said to connect perhaps more closely than any other part of England could do, historical times with those of the great dynasty of winter.

Here in old times in history but in very recent ones in geology there was once a noble forest. It stood on a clayey surface now sunk down so low, that "were the clay bared of its peaty covering it would be drowned by salt water ten or twenty feet in depth." Remains of this forest stretch under the peat or rather imbedded in the peat for miles along the coast of Lincolnshire, and sixty years ago reached a mile out to sea. "It is evident," says Mr. Clarke, “that the ruined forest with its thick covering of tidal warp once extended far out into what is now the German Ocean."

It seems to have been a forest of very fine timber; "in some localities the oaks and firs attained an altitude now unknown in England," in other parts only marsh wood is found, such as the alder, birch, willow, and sallow. Some of the trees look as if they had been prostrated by a storm or violent flood.

The forest grew on a soft alluvial clay, here a few inches there as much as twenty feet thick. Beneath this are found the Oxford clay or beds of boulder clay, sand, or gravel. But in other and very large parts the soft clay reposes upon a second subterranean forest

of oak, yew, and other timber rooted in drift clay as at Boston eighteen feet from the surface. Some of the trees in it are of immense magnitude.

"There was plainly a depression of the country before this earliest forest was submerged for the deposition of the blue clay" on which the upper forest grew. "The age of this forest is fixed after the dispersion of the boulder clay, but before the accumulation of the yellow drift gravel of Deeping, which has been found overlying the lower peat and its imbedded trees. A remarkable circumstance is that this forest may be seen far out in the Wash Bay in particular states of the tide; and a stone axe has been discovered in the cleft of a broken trunk, two miles from highwater mark off Hunstanton."

The timber of the forest first spoken of is sometimes found bearing marks of man's handiwork and stone celts have been discovered near them. "In Downham Fen were found under the peat, and resting upon the subjacent clay, pieces of wood piled for making a fire with the embers still left in the centre. In Deeping Fen was exhumed a canoe forty-six feet in length and nearly six feet in width, hollowed out of a single log; it lay below the peat and above the clay, resting upon cross timbers, which had been broken by its weight.

By the time the Romans were masters of England great part of the level had become a fen. As usual they built a road which was marked by that thoroughness of purpose which distinguished all the undertakings of this great people. This road went right across the Fens from Downham in Norfolk to Whittlesea and Peterborough. It was a gravel causeway three feet

thick and forty to sixty feet broad in some places; it rests upon a foundation of oak timber and ragstone bearing upon the peat. In the time of the Saxons level had become a large

and Normans again the

stretch of tarns and pools, "with immense bogs and turf moors, while some portions were clad with moisture-loving trees and vert afforested by royalty."

Now if the forest were, as Mr. Clarke thinks, apparently for most solid grounds, frequented by the old people for the sake of firing and shelter, a vast lapse of time must have taken place between their epoch and that of the Romans, for over the peat in which are buried the remains of the forest lies in the marsh district a sea-bed sometimes twenty feet in thickness; and yet that this old sea-bed or marsh land had been deposited before the time of the Romans, Mr. Clarke thinks is quite clear.

"Two centuries ago the outermost sea barrier was what is called the Old Roman Bank.' A document of the reign of Henry II. speaks of this immense engineering work as the Old Sea Bank.' It is certain from the low level of the land that the many towns and villages contiguous to the bank could not have existed before it had barred out the ocean; and most of them are named in Domesday Book' as having existed (many with their salt-pans) in the days of Edward the Confessor. Wisbeach could not have been out of the salt water had there been no embankments; yet Wisbeach and its river embouchure are distinctly spoken of in a Saxon charter of A.D. 664. Still further, some of the towns guarded by this bank have roman names and roman remains ; the embankment communicates with several undoubted

roman sites, and while many roman relics are discovered on the the inland side, none have ever been found on the sea side of the bank. The level of the country and the position of the bank show that no subsidence has occurred since the roman age; while the fact of the bank standing upon the thick stratum of marine warp which overlies the peat forests confirms the inference from the roman road, that the subsidence and flooding of the woodland terrain happened long before the Romans visited the scene."

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST DWELLERS UPON EARTH.

"There went a fame in heaven, that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant

A generation, whom his choice regard

Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven."

AFTER the land had been made a garden for his use, and earth, sea, and river had begun to bear food for him, came Man in his appointed time

"A creature, who, not prone

And brute as other creatures, but endued
With sanctity of reason, might erect

His stature, and upright with front serene
Govern the rest "-

to dwell for a season in the cave and wigwam and seek a precarious existence with his rude canoe and clumsy implements of chase, preying on animals weaker or more stupid than himself, and dying like the beast of prey till he succeeded to the dignity of the cromlech and barrow. One might have thought that had he lived in the time of the gigantic beasts of prey and the great pachyderms which once dwelt in England his lot must have been mournful indeed. The inspired writer who likened him to the grass of the field, the poet who drew him calamitous by birth,