SAND 



139 



are subjected to ranch attrition, so that eventually 

 even the smallest grains become well rounded, and 

 when seen under a magnifying glass resemble little 

 pebbles. Sand-deposits are also the result of vol- 

 canic action. These consist of the very finely com- 

 minuted debris of volcanic rocks, and are readily 

 distinguished from sedimentary and ceolian sands. 

 Now and again, however, volcanic sands are sifted 

 by the winds and heaped up into dunes. 



Sand varies in texture from extremely fine-grained, 

 almost dust-like material, up to coarse granu- 

 lar grit. Indeed all gradations occur from sand 

 through coarse grit into tine gravel. Pure white 

 sands are not uncommon, but shades of yellow, 

 brown, and red predominate, especially in the case 

 of :tolian and aqueous sands. The colour is gener- 

 ally due to the presence of iron. Gray, dark-brown, 

 green, and black sands are also met with. The 

 latter are often largely coni]>osed of magnetite, and 

 have been derived from the disintegration of certain 

 igneous rocks such as basalt. Green sands usually 

 owe their colour to glauconite. Volcanic sands are 

 generally dingy chiefly dull gray or black. Some 

 sands are rich in gold, others in precious stones 

 and gems. These are alluvial deposits which have 

 been derived from the disintegration of crystalline 

 igneous rocks, schists, &c. Pure white sands are 

 in demand for the manufacture of glass, while 

 others are employed as abrasives in sawing marble, 

 &c., and in smoothing the surfaces of that and other 

 ornamental stones. Sharp sand, again, is largely 

 used for mixing with mortar. See DRIFT, GRAVEL, 

 PLIOCENE SYSTEM, QUICKSAND, SAHARA, SAND- 

 STONE. 



MUSICAL SAND. Some kinds of sand, which con- 

 sist of well-rounded and polished grains of tolerably 

 uniform size, and which are clear or free from dust 

 and small particles, exhibit remarkable sonorous 

 qualities when struck or subjected to friction. The 

 well-known ' musical sand ' of the island of Eigg 

 (Inner Hebrides) is a good example, and was at one 

 time believed to lie almost unique ; but, as Professor 

 Bolton of Hartford, Connecticut, and Dr A. Julien 

 of New York have shown, sonorous sands are widely 

 distributed in Europe and America. The sounds 

 emitted are often decidedly musical, and distinct 

 notes can be produced, high or low, according to 

 the nature of the friction and the quantity of sand 

 operated upon. When one walks over a bed of 

 strongly sonorous sand a tingling sensation is per- 

 ceived even through the boots. After being sub- 

 jected to friction for some little time musical sand 

 gradually loses its peculiar qualities, and the same 

 result is produced when the sand is wetted. There 

 is nothing in the appearance of musical sand to 

 distinguish it from mute sand sonorous and non- 

 sonorous sand of precisely similar aspect lying 

 side by side on the same beach. No satisfactory 

 explanation of the phenomenon has been given. 



SANDBANKS. These are met with in the beds of 

 rivers ami estuaries and shallow seas. In rivers 

 the banks are usually elongated in the direction of 

 the current, and are liable to constant changes as 

 the force and direction of the current become 

 modified. Opposite the mouths of rivers sand- 

 banks tend to accumulate. Much of the material 

 of which these bars are composed is brought down 

 by the rivers, but a large proportion is also swept 

 up by the sea itself. Such banks are constantly 

 changing their form, and oscillating to and fro, 

 according as the sea or the river is the more active. 

 The sea also tends to form sandbanks across the 

 months of shallow inlets and other indentations of 

 a coast-line, so that eventually a secondary coast- 

 line may come to be formed in this way shallow 

 lagoons separating the new from the old coast-line. 



Islands are in like manner converted into penin- 

 *ulas by the heaping up of sandbanks by tidal- 



currents between them and the mainland. The 

 Eye peninsula in the Island of Lewis is an example, 

 and there are many islets off British coasts which 

 in time will be converted into similar peninsulas by 

 the growth of sandbanks, which in some cases has 

 proceeded so far that the islets become peninsulas 

 at low tide. In the shallow seas that surround the 

 British Islands sandbanks are of common occur- 

 rence. Some of these are doubtless due to tklal 

 action, as is the case with the sandbanks of similar 

 shallow seas all the world over. Others again prob- 

 ably mark the sites of undulating land-surfaces 

 submerged during a recent geological period. It is 

 thought by some that the Dogger Banks of the 

 North Sea may consist largely of the morainic 

 debris laid down by the great Scandinavian ice- 

 sheet of the glacial period, now more or less modi- 

 fied by current-action. 



Siinil. GEORGE, the nom de guerre of Armand- 

 ine (or Amantine) Lucile Anrore Dupin, ' Baronne ' 

 Dudevant, was born in Paris on the 5th July 1804, 

 and died at Nohant in Berri on the 7th June 1876. 

 Her father Maurice Dupin was the son of M. Dupin 

 de Francueil (well known in the writings of 

 Rousseau and his circle) by a natural daughter of 

 the Marshal de Saxe and of Mdlle. Verriere, also 

 well known in the 18th century. Aurore's own 

 mother was a Parisian milliner. Her father died 

 when she was very young, and she was the subject 

 of continual disputes between her mother and her 

 grandmother, Madame Dupin (by her first marriage 

 Comtesse de Horn). Aurore lived with both in 

 turn, but principally at Nohant with her grand- 

 mother, on whose death the property descended 

 to her. She was educated partly at home, partly 

 at the English convent in Paris, and represents 

 herself in her voluminous Histoire de ma Vie 

 (which contains little fact and much fancy) as a 

 child full of reverie of all kinds. An heiress as 

 has been said, though in no great way, and with 

 no near relations except her mother, she was 

 married at the age of eighteen to a certain M. 

 Dudevant, the natural son of a colonel and baron 

 of the empire, who also had some small fortune. 

 The marriage was quite of the ordinary French 

 kind, with no love, but also no particular dis- 

 like, between the parties. Two children were born 

 of it a boy, Maurice (1825-89), who afterwards 

 took his mother's assumed surname and became a 

 man of letters of some little accomplishment, and a 

 girl, Solange, who married the sculptor Clesinger. 

 Very little is known of M. Dndevant, who seems, 

 however, to have been by no means especially 

 tyrannical or offensive, but merely an ordinary 

 squireen, devoted to sport, not actively sym- 

 pathising with, but also not violently opposing 

 Iiis wife's bookish tastes, and probably, as her 

 lettei-s show, a good deal tried by the increasing 

 number of her doubtless Platonic friendships. 

 After nine years of married life, towards the end 

 of which the situation became very much strained, 

 she 'threw her cap over the mills,' and at first 

 resigning her property to her husband as the 

 price of an amicable separation, went to Paris to 

 make her living by literature, to associate (often 

 in men's clothes) with the Bohemian society of 

 the time ( 1831 ), and in short to ' see life ' gener- 

 ally in a very full sense. Nevertheless after some 

 years the local tribunals found sufficient cause in 

 her husband's behaviour to turn the amicable 

 into a legal separation, and to give her the com- 

 plete enjoyment of her own property. For the 

 best part of twenty years her life ( apart from its 

 literary features, to which we shall come presently ) 

 was spent in the company and partly under the 

 influence of divers more or less distinguished men, 

 with some of whom she certainly, and with others 

 probably, was on the terms which might be 



