58 SOME NOTES ON "MOORLOG."
(2.) Moorlog is not dredged up between the Dogger Bank
and the shores. If it were drifted material, one would expect to
find it generally distributed over the floor of the North Sea
instead of being restricted to definite areas.
(3.) Floating masses of peat are not seen in the North Sea.
(4.) If the moorlog has been washed off from existing shores
or carried out to sea by rivers, we should look for its source of
origin in the lowlands of Holland, Germany, or Denmark, i.e.,
countries to the south of the latitude of the Dogger Bank. The
directions in which the currents run are as follows:—The
Atlantic drift, entering from the north, passes down our east
coast as far as Norfolk. The current from the Strait of Dover
then deflects this drift eastward past Friesland until, meeting
Denmark, it turns northward to the deep water off Norway.2 These
currents go round the Dogger Bank and not across it, so they
could not carry material from Holland, Denmark, or Germany to
the Dogger Bank,
(5.) Mr. and Mrs. Reid's report on the plant remains points
to the origin of the deposit at some distance from rising land.
The position of the Dogger Bank would fit these conditions
admirably.
We may now consider briefly some of the theories which have
been put forward to account for the position and origin of the
Dogger Bank.
Sir John Murray, in a paper read before the Institute of
Civil Engineers (loc. cit.), suggested that the Bank had been
formed by deposition of sediment carried by the water which
circulates round the Dogger; while the deep channel around it
had been eroded by the current. Sir John Murray went on to
say that "if these tides continue their present course they will,
sooner or later, cause this extensive shoal to become an island
in the middle of the North Sea." A long discussion followed
the paper, in which a number of Naval Officers joined, and it is
significant that the theory advanced got but little support from
them.
Prof. Boyd Dawkins,3 in speaking of the collection of bones of
Pleistocene mammals dredged from the North Sea, says that the
2 Sir John Murray. "The North Sea, with remarks on some of its Friths and Estuaries."
Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng. xx (1861) pp. 314-334.
3 Early Man in Britain (1880), p. 149.