The direction which these icebergs took was invariably from north-west to south-east, or north-north-west to south-south-east, that being sufficiently indicated by the polished and striated rocks frequently discovered in all parts of the county. A careful investigation of the erratic blocks which have been discovered in one small district alone[1] shows nearly 400 of these rocks, some of which have travelled from Scotland, but by far the larger number have come from the Lake District; these are occasionally found in the valleys, but are generally located on the sides and tops of hills at an elevation of from 600 to 1,200 feet above the sea-level. Geology furnishes abundant proofs that at this period the level of the land in what is now known as Lancashire was fifty or sixty feet higher than it is at the present day; this is very apparent along the coast-line, where the remains of submarine forests are frequently met with. It is more than probable that, from the mouth of the Mersey to the estuary of the Dudden, what are now sand banks were in prehistoric times dry land on which grew forests of the oak, the birch, the ash, the yew, and Scotch firs. All along the coast-line from Liverpool to Preston have been found at low water the roots and trunks of trees. Near Fleetwood and Blackpool frequent traces of these forests have been met with below the high-tide level, the trunks of the trees all pointing eastward, with their torn-up roots to the west; stumps of Scotch firs were found near Rossall, and near to them the cones which had fallen from their branches; trunks of oak and yew trees were also discovered at Martin Mere (in Poulton). In these forests the brown bear, the wild boar, roes and stags, the wolf and the reindeer, and a host of other wild animals, would all be discovered by the neolithic man when he first made his appearance in the district. Whence came this earlier settler? and at what exact period did he come? are questions which modern scientific research has failed to satisfactorily answer.