Gorpen anv Dixon— Deposits of Unbroken Marine Shells. 327 
narrow recesses, or clefts, under the cliffs are sufficient to dispose 
of this suggestion. We find it alike impossible to believe that 
they have been carried by human agency. The land hereabouts 
is barren uncultivated mountain, without even a hovel near; and 
if it be thought suggestive that the shells were first found near 
the road, it must also be remembered that others were found, 
under similar conditions, about half a mile inland, and over 700 
feet up the side of the mountain. 
The aspect of the rocks, together with the fact that the shells 
are all shallow-water forms, naturally suggests to the ordinary 
observer that the explanation is to be found in a receding sea- 
level, and that the deposits should be regarded as raised beaches. 
No geologist, however, we fancy, would for one moment entertain 
this suggestion, yet we have no other to offer. 
The shells found are exactly those kinds which at present 
occur in large numbers at the existing coast-line ; and the extremely 
perfect state of preservation which may be observed in many of 
the limpets, leads one to doubt if they could possibly have been 
torn while alive from the rocks to which they clung. The intact 
condition of the edges of many of the shells harmonizes more 
readily with the idea that with the death of their inhabitants they 
had fallen down into the clefts of the rocks, and been protected 
from erosion and injury. Shells equally well preserved are to be 
found packed away in the rock-crevices which occur between the 
existing tide-marks near where the shell-deposits were found. 
We hope that these observations, although extremely incom- 
plete, may be of some geological importance or interest. 
