Mr Hugh Miller on the Geology of the Silloth Lock. 343 



tides, and 7 or 8 feet above the highest tide recorded at 

 Silloth. The deposit, therefore, belongs entirely to the period 

 of the raised beaches, dating back probably to the elevation 

 of the country from the " 50-feet " to the " 25-feet " level as 

 recorded in Scotland generally, and certainly not added to 

 since the upheaval of the 10 to 15 feet beach now traceable 

 round the Solway from Scotland into England, and known 

 on both sides of the country. From evidence furnished at 

 the two ends of Hadrian's Wall, it seems indubitable that the 

 North of England has undergone no change of level since the 

 Eoman occupation.^ 



Bloivn Sand. — '* When the old dock was made," says Dr 

 Leitch,^ " and when the lines of railway leading to it, and 

 which, until lately, ran over the site of the new dock, were 

 laid down, several sand dunes, 20 to 30 feet in height, had 

 to be removed." The sand-drift, however, did not cease. 

 Much to the annoyance of the workmen, it even continued 

 more or less throughout the progress of the new dock, and 

 in spite of the precautions of the contractors. The chance 

 cuttings or scoop-shaped slips at the edges of the new 

 excavation were in this way levelled by fresh sand-deposits, 

 and the top section of the dock-cutting assumed much the 

 appearance of hona fide blown sand. 



My friend, Dr Leitch, to whom I have already had occasion 

 to acknowledge my indebtedness, and who visited the. dock 



^ Dr Collingwood Bruce, ''Haudbook to the Roman Wall," 1884, pp. 38, 

 222. These facts seem not to be generally known among geologists. I make 

 no apology for quoting Dr Bruce: "Mr Buddie, the famous coal engineer, 

 told the writer that when bathing in the river (the Tyne) as a boy, he had 

 often noticed the foundations of this wall (at Wallsend, on the Tyne) extend- 

 ing far into the stream. Mr Leslie has seen it go as far into the water as the 

 lowest tides enabled him to observe " (p. 38). And again, " At Wallsend we 

 have seen that the eastern wall of the station was continued down the hill 

 to a point below low-water mark in the river Tyne ; a similar arrangement 

 prevailed here. Mr M'Lauchlan says, 'Beyond Bowness .... the 

 old inhabitants point out, at about 250 yards from the north-west angle 

 of the station, a spot where a quantity of stone was dug out of the beach 

 many years since for building purposes, and the line of it was followed 

 for some distance under the sand without arriving at the end of it ' " 

 (p. 222). 



2 Loc. ciL, p. 170. 



