A. R. Hunt — Geological Physics of the Shallow Seas. 325 



So far as my experience goes, there is no Englishman who takes 

 a lively interest in all these phenomena, but perhaps some day 

 Dr. Nansen will look at them in the light of his profound 

 acquaintance with the more fully developed marine sculpturing 

 of Scandinavia. 



The Torquay marine platforms and shelves, drowned valleys, 

 and submerged forests are duplicated remarkably on the coast of 

 Galloway, and curiously enough the headland corresponding to 

 Berry Head is called the Burrow Head ! 



If we examine an ordinary map of the South of England we 

 shall note that the Lizard Head, Prawle Point, and Portland Bill 

 are nearly in line, the Prawle Point projecting, with deep bays 

 both east and west of it ; both the Lizard and the Prawle 

 liaving stoutly, and appai'ently almost perfectly, resisted the attacks 

 of the waves. We see in the rocky foreshore at the Prawle, nearly 

 a quarter of a mile from high-water mark to the furthest reef 

 uncovered at low tide, how hard the fight has been. This four 

 hundred yards tidal platform cut in the hard metaraorphic rocks of 

 the Prawle district is a very significant phenomenon. If we follow 

 the line of coast eastward we find the great resistance collapses when 

 the metamorphic rocks are passed, but minor resistances will be 

 noticed at Froward Point, near Dartmouth, and in the massive 

 limestones of Berry Head. Then resistance is for a time entir6.ly 

 overcome, and the sea forces its way due north across the present 

 entrance of Torbay to Hope's Nose and beyond, where, however, we 

 need not follow its victorious career. The south-westerly gales 

 having failed to overcome the massive Bei-ry Head limestones, 

 down Channel easterly gales attacked the new line of coast, at right 

 angles to the original course of marine erosion, and cut out Torbay. 

 Now it is clear that the northern Torbay raised beaches could not 

 exist till the coastline had reached their positions, nor could the 

 southern Torbay raised beaches exist till after the east and west 

 erosion of Torbay had made much progress. Thus the erosion that 

 took place between the first attacks on the Prawle coast and the 

 formation of the Torbay beaches is a measure of the time that 

 elapsed between those two events ; and the subsequent erosion of 

 Torbay westward and of the great west bay northward is 

 a measure of the time that has elapsed since the formation of the 

 Torbay raised beach platforms or ' shore ledges.' The latter 

 amount of time elapsed carries us back to a period when Trophon 

 trimcatns was abundant in the English Channel, whereas now it is 

 absent therefrom. But how much further back does the earlier 

 period of erosion take us ? That is the question. But that remote 

 period witnessed the commencement of marine erosion on the 

 Prawle coastline. 



Geologists make free with local elevations and subsidences, but 

 the fact seems clear that at Bridlington, in the Prawle district, and 

 on the south-east coast of Ireland, sea and land at these distant 

 localities are now within a few feet of the levels they occupied in 

 the remote Pleistocene past. 



