INTERESTING GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 767, 29 December 1876, Page 3

INTERESTING GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY.

—o — Recent excavations for n new tidal basin at the Surrey Commercial Docks having given rise to rumors of geological discoveries, the place has just been visited by some of the Fellows of the Geological .Society of London, under the'guidance ofj the.Rev. E. Jocelyn Bleek, rector of Rotherhithie. The excavations are just within the priocipal entrance to the docks, a few minutes’ walk from the Cherry Garden Pier, on the Thams, and are several aerss in extent. On penetrating some six feet below the surface, the workmen everywhere came across a subterranean forest bed, consisting of peat with trunks of trees, for the most part still standing erect All are of the species still inhabiting Britain, and the oak, alder, and willow are apparently most abundant. The trees are not minrealised, but retain there vegetable character, except that they are thoroughly saturated with water. In the peat are found large bones, which have been determined as those of the great fossil ox (Bos primigenius). Pivali water shells are also found. These and other circumstances at once enabled the visitors to read the history of the formation. No doubt is entertained that the bed thus exposed is a continuation of the old buried forest, of wide extent ( which has on several re. cent occasions been brought to the daylight on both sides of the Thames, notably at Walthamstow in the year 1869, in excavating for the East London Waterworks ; at Pin instead in 18S2-3, in making the southern outfall sewer; and a Tew weeks since at Westminster, on the site of the new aquarium and winter gardens. In each instance the'forest bed is found buried beneath the marsh clay, showing that the land has sunk beneath the tidal level since the forest flourished. The earliest account of it is given by Captain Perry, the famous engineer who dug into it at. Dagenham some 150 years since. It is well known rfco geologists that this same submerged forest-track crops out under the banks of the Thames between Woolwich and Erith, and there are Thames watermen still living who knew the trees by the name of “ moorlog” (Captain Perry’s name for them), and used them for mooring their barges So far the discovery of animal remains at the Rotherhithie excavations has been limited as compared with those found at Walthamstow; but the co-relation of the physical features of the two places and the ■general evidence show that the forest belons to the'period of the elk and the reindeer in the south of England, and possibly to the bronze age of prehistoric archaeology. The sections at Rotherhithie are at present in admirable condition for showing the succession of the beds in which the peat and trees occur, and the trees themselves may be seen in situ.

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