8

ANCIENT SEA-MARGINS.

much circumscribed, but considerably different fromthe present—for one tiling, much bolder. It wouldalso deprive us of the sites of the lower parts ofLondon , Bristol , Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow ,Aberdeen, and Inverness, and of the entire sites ofPortsmouth, Southampton and Chichester, of Hull,Dumfries, Greenock , Leith, and Perth . The samesubmersion, extended to the Continent, would blotno small space from the map of Europe .

8. Where we have large expanses of these lowlands, the flatness is usually very striking. For in-stance, in an extensive plain beside the Bristol Chan­ nel , the equability is so great over large areas, that theExeter Railway passes over it for twenty-eight miles(from Ashton Water to Claverham Court) with agradual rise of only four feet; and even this is per-haps to be attributed to the lines taking an obliquecourse athwart the plain, and against its seaward,declination. Such equability makes the land almostthe rival of the sea in the trueness of its surface tothe centre of the earth, and forcibly suggests thatwater was concerned in giving it such a configura-tion. Such a plain is, indeed, precisely what wouldbe presented to us as a piece of new land, if some ofour shallow seas, such as the Bristol Channel , themouth of the Humber, or the Solway Firth, were tosink forty feet below their present level. The carsesin Scotland are also generally level, though notwithout partial inequalities, which a slight examina-