53 



Sand. 



By J. G. Waller. 



(Read January 27, 1882.) 



A grain of sand is one of the smallest of visible atoms, and as 

 such passes into the language of metaphor. The aggregation 

 of sand, as a symbol of untold multitude, is probably familiar 

 to every language upon earth. In the operations of nature, work- 

 ing about us, we are ever being astonished at the minuteness of 

 an individual agent towards a mighty end. So it is with sand, not 

 only as it is working now, but as it has worked in illimitable ages 

 past. The attrition of hard particles — silex — whether produced by 

 storm floods, river torrents, or the tempestuous waves of the ocean, 

 plays a part in its production, blocking up estuaries, and forming 

 at the mouths of rivers dangerous shoals. This is mostly shown by 

 those grand rivers of the earth draining large continents, and not 

 tidal. But at the mouth of our own Thames, which is tidal, and a 

 mere pigmy in comparison, we have large sandy deposits, often 

 fatal to the mariner. Thrice has our great poet named the " Good- 

 wins," and in " The Merchant of Venice " it is spoken of as " a very 

 dangerous flat and fatal, where the carcasses of many a tall ship 

 lie buried." 



Then there are the vast sandy deserts, like dry oceans, also 

 disturbed with moving waves and storms, overwhelming whole 

 caravans of merchants or of pilgrims, who leave behind them a trail 

 of whitened bones. Besides which it has its floods, as we call those 

 moving sands lifted by the wind, and which in Egypt have en- 

 croached upon that fertile oasis, burying many of its ancient and 

 renowned cities, whose monuments would seem almost to defy the 

 hand of time. Nor are we without these phenomena in our own 

 country, as the entombed church of Piranzabuloe, in Cornwall, testi- 

 fies. But one of the most remarkable of these sand floods occurred 

 in 1688, on the borders of Suffolk and Norfolk, and which is fully 

 described by a gentleman, named Wright, a great sufferer by its de- 

 structive influence, in the early numbers of the Philosophical Trans* 



Journ. Q. M. C, Series II., No. 2. F 



