Wright and Muff — P re-glacial Raised Beach. 257 



yards, where it ends abruptly in a small cliff 3 or 4 feet high, 

 leaving the rest of the platform uncovered. The surface of the 

 rock is beautifully polished and striated, and forms a remarkable 

 contrast to the water-worn appearance it usually presents. The 

 striae run in an approximately eastern and western direction, nearly 

 parallel to the shore, so that they could not have been formed by 

 soil-slip, even if their nature were such as to render this expla- 

 nation possible. Thus, the proof of the pre-glacial age of the 

 platform does not depend merely on the superposition of the 

 boulder- clay (see Plate XXV.). 



4. General Account of the Raised-Shore Platform and 

 Overlving Deposits. 



The most persistent relic of the raised-beach period is the 

 buried rock-cliff and shore platform. The platform, as already 

 described, presents a smoothed, slightly undulating surf ace, which 

 slopes seawards from the foot of the buried cliff, usually at angles 

 varying from 3° to 10°. Where the inner margin of the platform 

 is exposed, it is rounded off into the cliff, and the wave-worn sur- 

 face of the platform is prolonged 3 or 4 feet up the face of 

 the cliff. This feature, it need hardly be pointed out, is to be 

 seen everywhere on a modern shore where the sea washes the foot 

 of the cliff at high tide. 



In Courtmacaherry Bay, about 500 yards east of Howe's Strand 

 Coast-guard Station, the surface of the platform is channelled from 

 north to south by furrows which pass under the ferricrete sand of 

 the raised beach. The furrows run down the slope of the platform 

 across the strike of the rocks, and seldom seem to coincide with a 

 joint or other line of weakness. They appear to have been produced 

 by the washing of gravel and sand backwards and forwards across 

 the shore ; but, whatever their origin, it is to be noted that similar 

 furrows are to be seen in many places on the present shore, where 

 the rocks have been cut down to a nearly level surface (see Plates 

 XXIII. and XXVI.). 



In comparing and contrasting the pre-glacial with the modern 

 shore, it became very evident that on the former the rocks were 

 reduced to a much more uniform level. Hard beds do not stand 

 out so conspicuously ; and stacks and knobs of rocks, so often found 



