Mr Hugh Miller on the Geology of the Silloih Bock. 341 



existence of shallow sea placed some distance beyond reach 

 of the deposits of shifting sand which at present occupy the 

 upper part of the Solway Firth. 



The Current-hedded Sand and Shingle. — The remainder of 

 the marine deposit was intensely current-bedded from top to 

 bottom. Its shells for the most part were wasted and broken, 

 and scattered about at random. They had evidently been 

 washed to and fro in the ceaseless currents to which the whole 

 bed testified. A valve of Pholas eandida, found in sand near 

 the bottom, was among the few remains of shell life which 

 had escaped un wasted, probably from its lightness. The 

 other shells were, I think,^ chiefly mussels and limpets. 



The gravel, like the sand, was inconstant and false-bedded. 

 In parts of the dock it had been laid down in good thick 

 beds as much as ten feet in thickness and of great value to 

 the contractors ; but these I observed wedging out into the 

 sand, or dividing up amongst it like the rays of a fan. I had 

 gone to the dock expecting to find a general slope of the 

 bedding seawards — like that of the present beach. There 

 was no such slope : and I may also remark that I failed to 

 detect the general slope shorewards which my colleague, Mr 

 Goodchild, seems to have remarked.^ But in any case the 

 deposit was one mass of current-bedding as if laid down 

 by shifting currents in a waterway. There was not a hori- 

 zontal layer in the whole. Here and there were lumps and 

 thin layers of current-drifted peat, and a few snags of sodden- 

 lookincr wood. Towards the bottom there had been much 

 circulation of underground water above the retentive till, 

 and the gravel was rusted and stuck together in masses by a 

 deposit of hydrous peroxide of iron. When I visited the dock 

 the water was still streaming out from the side nearest the 

 town, the wells of which had been partly tapped owing to 

 the continuity of the deposit for some distance inland. 



Some of the bones bear the rusty colouring of these lower 



1 I regret that my notes of the shells of the whole deposit are rather 

 meagre. I was informed that large collections were being made by 'the then 

 curate of Silloth with a view to its elucidation. The lists, however, if they 

 exist, have not been made available for quotation here. 



2 Trans. Cumberland and Westmoreland Assoc, No. ix., 1883-84, p. 2H. 



