Hunt — On the Action of Waves on Sea-beaches, Sfc. 283 



devoid of all shingle, and as unlike a bathing-cove as any place can 

 be. The shingle in this cove was derived from quarries on the 

 south-west, which were largely worked some years ago. We have 

 in this case an instance of a beach on the north-western shores of 

 Lyme Bay, between Hope's Nose and Teignmouth, being suddenly 

 destroyed by the shingle travelling en masse to the northward. On 

 Oddicombe beach the largest shingle collects at the north-eastern 

 end. There is little doubt that the bulk of the Oddicombe shingle 

 came from the quarries to the south-west, already referred to ; but 

 the most incontestable evidence of the travel of large fragments of 

 stone from S. W. to N. E. will be found in the " junctions " of 

 greenstone and slate, traversed by calcite veins, which junctions are 

 occasionally picked up on the beach up to its extreme north-eastern 

 end, and are all derived from the coast between the S. W. end of 

 Oddicombe beach and Babbicombe beach, where the greenstone rock 

 bursts through the Devonian slate, forming a junction with it. 

 Evidence of the south-western travel of the sand will be found in 

 the direction of the sand-spit at the mouth of the river Teign, which 

 stretches from the eastern towards the western bank of that river ; 

 also from the persistent tendency of the sand derived from the 

 crushed shingle to collect at the south-western end of the said Oddi- 

 combe beach, one of the longest and most important beaches between 

 Teignmouth and Hope's Nose. The j^oint to which I desire to call 

 attention is that, between Teignmouth and Hope's Nose, sand 

 has been observed to travel in a south-westerly direction, and 

 shingle in a north-westerly direction, and that two observers, 

 judging the one from the sand, the other from the shingle, 

 would arrive at conclusions diametrically opposite as to the general 

 driftage of beach-material on the north-western shores of Lyme 

 Bay. Such a difference of opinion, as we have seen, has actually 

 arisen in the case of the Chesil Bank, on the eastern shores of the 

 same bay ; those observers who have based their conclusions on 

 the existence of sand to the westward of the shingle, and on the 

 gradual diminution in size of the shingle from east to west, having 

 contended that the driftage must be towards the sand from the 

 shingle ; whereas those who have more especially observed the 

 action of waves on large beach- stones have contended that the 

 shingle must have travelled from the direction of the sands. The 

 difficulty will ^-anish when it is seen that both sets of observers may 



