( 181 ) 



On the Origin of the Sand-hillocks of St Ives Bay^ JFIiitesand 

 Bay, and Mount's Bay. By RiCHARD EDMONDS, jun., Esq.* 



The sand-hills of St Ives Bay, which are almost entirely 

 covered with turf, the arundo arenaria, mosses, and other 

 plants, occupy some square miles of the northern coast of Corn* 

 wall, and consist chiefly of comminuted marine shells, carried 

 from the shore by violent winds. 



They are called " the Towans'* from the Cornish word 

 towyn, " a turfy down," — the word " down" being, perhaps, a 

 mere corruption of *• towyn" by the very common change of 

 the letter t into d. And it is remarkable that the name Les 

 Landes,1[ '* barren heaths," given to the sandy district on the 

 south-western coast of France, is almost precisely the same 

 with Lelant, the parish in the Towans, where an ancient mar- 

 ket-town is said to have been buried by the sand. Hence, 

 Towans, Downs, Lelant, and Les Landes (here, again, the t is 

 converted into d) may be all regarded as synonymous. 



Some suppose, according to an old tradition, that these 

 sand-hills, with the exception of a few feet immediately be- 

 low the surface, were blown in during one tremendous tem- 

 pest. X 



Others, judging from the dark horizontal lines — the re- 

 mains of old vegetable surfaces — which occur at various 

 depths within a few feet of the present surface, and which 

 alternate with layers of light sand, consider that the hillocks 

 were formed by a succession, at distant intervals, of thick de- 

 posits, which always buried the then growing turf, and some- 

 times to considerable depths. § 



A third hypothesis which I would suggest is, that the sand 



* Read before the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, on the 15th of Oc- 

 tober 1846. 



t Lande " (/ranch etendue de terre qui n^est pas propre au labour." Dictionaire 

 Breton. 



X A similar opinion prevailed in reference to the sand-banks of Mount's 

 Bay. See Trans, of the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, 1826, p. 179. 



§ See Sir 11. De la Becho's Geological Report of Cornwall, Devon, and 

 Somerset, p. 445. 



