A. B. Hunt — Geological Physics of the Shallow Seas. 323 



comminuted shells lying on one of the low-level beach platforms, 

 and passes on without further remark.^ Comminuted shells are 

 often quite enough for a conchologist, and might settle many 

 important questions. In fact, one of the present difficulties is to 

 account for shells with a southern range on Devonshire raised 

 beaches of the same levels as the Irish glacial beach-platforms. 

 But that is perhaps a comparative trifle compared to others. 



By a curious coincidence my friend Mr. Lamplugh published 

 bis account of the Bridlington pre - Glacial beach in a British 

 Association Eeport in 1888, and I published my own raised 

 beach work in the Trans. Dev. Assoc, in the same year. Now 

 Mr. Lamplugh's beach, so far as is known, contains only a few 

 ordinary present-day shells and the mammalian cave fauna, with 

 the addition of hippopotamus. These deposits rest on a chalk 

 beach platform, and are covered with glacial deposits, indicating 

 great cold. Thus the beach platform and the beach itself need not 

 represent so cold a climate as that which followed. But in the 

 Irish beaches described by Messrs. Wright & Muff, almost exactly 

 on the level of Mr. Lamplugh's beach, we have, much further south, 

 the rock platform itself ice-scored, affording no accommodation 

 for hippopotami. If both these beaches are ' pre-some-glacial ' 

 (as has been neatly said by a great geologist), have we to exalt 

 these superficial deposits to the 8,000 feet altitude of ice and snaw 

 and of aerial erosion of the most virulent type ? Then when these 

 beaches have descended again to the water-level in good preservation 

 must we give them a further dip ? These acrobatic oscillations, 

 which geologists summon to their aid as lightly as they would call 

 a hansom cab, absolutely confound the beach-student. 



If we transfer the Bridlington beach mammalian fauna to Kent's 

 Cavern, substituting beaver for hippopotamus, we find their horizon 

 to be the cave earth and upper stalagmite, during the earlier part of 

 • which period England must have been continental to admit of the 

 advent of the animals. As we find remains of the cave mammalia 

 on beach platforms both at Bridlington and the Gower Peninsula, 

 the question arises whether the beach platforms were cut before 

 England was continental and before the arrival of the mammalia, or 

 after the continental stage, and when the land and sea had returned 

 to their former levels. In the former case the platforms and beaches 

 would not be of the same age, whereas in the latter case they might 

 be. The immense difference in character between the old crystalline 

 and the new granular stalagmites in Kent's Cavern is best explained 

 by difference of climate. Under glacial conditions the formation 

 of stalagmite would be continuous even if intermittent-; though 

 this may seem an Hibernianism. Under present conditions there 

 would be alternate deposition and solution. Water charged with 

 lime and carbonic acid entering the cave in summer would dissolve 

 carbonate of lime, but in the winter would deposit it. The 

 crystalline stalagmite indicates conditions dissimilar from the 



1 Memoirs Geol. Surv., No. 356, p. 68. 



2 E.o-. the second-hand of a watch. 



