SOME NOTES ON "MOORLOG."
59
"dead carcases had evidently been collected in the eddies of a
river that helped to form the Dogger Bank."
Jukes-Browne4 regards the bank as a submerged plateau. He
considers that the occurrence of so many osseous remains is
against the theory of its having been silted up. With regard to 
Professor Boyd Dawkins' views, he (Jukes-Browne) says that it
is difficult to see how a river could form such: a bank. Jukes-
Browne has put forward his views very clearly in an article
entitled "The Geographical Evolution of the North Sea,"5 and
we cannot do better than quote from it at some length. In this
article he says:—
"We may therefore conclude that when the Ice Age was passing away the
whole bed of the North Sea was dry land, a broad, rolling plain, over which
travelled troops of elephants, rhinoceroses, wild cattle, deer, and horses, followed
and preyed upon by Palaeolithic man, as well as by lions, bears, leopards,
hyaenas, and wolves. Through this great plain ran the Rhine, of which all the
rivers of eastern England became the tributaries, and along these rivers
hippopotamuses, beavers, otters, and other creatures migrated into England.
"The Dogger Bank is a relic of this old land surface which lias never been
buried by modern deposits. From this bank many hundred specimens of bones,
teeth, and antlers have been dredged up, belonging to the mammoth, woolly
rhinoceros, horse, bison, urus, reindeer, Irish elk, stag, hyaena, bear, wolf, and
beaver. These remains have doubtless been derived from the gravels deposited
by the Rhine during its early wanderings over the North Sea plain, and the bank
is probably a plateau left by the subsequent deepening of the river channel during
elevation.
"We now reach the final phase of this long history—the time of the last
subsidence which once more submerged the North Sea floor and filled the valley
of the English Channel with water. The sea must gradually have advanced up
the course of the Rhine and over the lower parts of the North Sea plain,
isolating the Dogger Bank, which must for a time have existed as an island.
Slowly as depression continued the sea crept up the valleys of the English rivers,
while its waves attacked the intervening coast lines, and cut them back towards
their present positions."
The facts we have gathered together certainly support the
views advanced by Jukes-Browne, that the Dogger Bank is the
remains of a submerged plateau6. Further, we may regard the
existing fens of East Anglia with their fauna and flora as a relic
of a much greater fenland which once joined England to the
continent.
We hope to have further opportunities of obtaining organic
remains from the moorlog, in order that they may be studied
4 The Building of the British Isles (1888).
5 Contemporary Review (1893), pp. 704-712.
6 Since this paper was brought before the Essex Field Club, Mr. Clement Reid has called
our attention to the views of Sir Archibald Geikie on the subject of the origin of the Dogger
Bank. These views are summarised in an addendum to this paper.