CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Most of our sea-side places of resort lie at the mouths of small valleys, which originally gave the fishermen easy access to the shore, and later on provided fairly level sites for building. At such places the fishermen will tell you of black peaty earth, with hazel-nuts, and often with tree-stumps still rooted in the soil, seen between tide-marks when the overlying sea-sand has been cleared away by some storm or unusually persistent wind. If one is fortunate enough to be on the spot when such a patch is uncovered this "submerged forest" is found to extend right down to the level of the lowest tides. The trees are often well-grown oaks, though more commonly they turn out to be merely brush-wood of hazel, sallow, and alder, mingled with other swamp- plants, such as the rhizomes of Osmuuda.
These submerged forests or "Noah's Woods" as they are called locally, have attracted attention from early times, all the more so owing to the existence of an uneasy feeling that, though like most other
