480 Corres^yondence — A. R. Hunt. 



Head, Aerial beds, or Eubble-drift, of the south-west of Englaud^ 

 geologists have entertained the idea that both the beach-platforms 

 and the beach-deposits may have been influenced by coast ice. 



When Messrs. Wright and Mufi" recorded the fact that a beach- 

 platform in Ireland was scored by ice, nearly parallel with the shore, 

 it never occurred to me that the agent could have been any other 

 than the coast ice so long postulated by the students of raised 

 beaches. Further, I accepted what I supposed to be Mr. Muflf's 

 proofs, in spite of my previous contention that the South Devon 

 beach-platforms were not due to coast ice. My paper on the Eaised 

 Beaches of Torbay (Trans. Dev. Assoc, 1903) was written to contest 

 Mr. Pidgeon's conclusions as to the Torbay beaches being accumulated 

 under semi-Arctic conditions, and their shells broken by ice. 



Ever since Mr. Muff's paper appeared, I have been trying to 

 reconcile his supposed (by myself) glacial ice-scratched platform 

 with the Devonshire evidence, that is to say, a platform contem- 

 poraneous with the ice-scorings. I have found it difficult. I am 

 profoundly grateful to Mr. Muff for his prompt and public correction 

 of my mistake. 



With regard to the Devonshire erratics, I may say that on the 17th 

 of August last I spent four hours on the Prawle coast, before and 

 after the lowest tide for that full moon. The two crystalline blocks 

 recorded by Pengelly some thirty years ago as on the strand, have 

 been since described as on the beach-platform. They lie just beyond 

 the reach of ordinary spring tides in calna weather, and are certainly 

 on the present tidal strand. When Pengelly described them, the 

 only known explanations of their presence wei'e : wreck, or ice. 

 They are far too heavy and unmanageable for use as ballast, so the 

 only explanation was ice. It was not then known that fishermen 

 often trawl blocks of the size of those referred to, and bring them 

 away from the fishing-grounds. Now, were a fishing-smack, carrying 

 two blocks, to be cast away on the Prawle coast in a S.S.E. gale at 

 the top of high- water spring tides, she might just possibly reach the 

 spot where the two Prawle blocks lie close together. Taking all the 

 facts into consideration, this explanation seems to be the least im- 

 probable of the three, viz., ice, ordinary wreck, or trawler wreck. 



The ten-ton boulder at Baggy Point in North Devon is obviously 

 nothing but an ice - borne erratic, and the puzzle is that it is 

 apparently associated with such a decidedly southern shell as 

 Cardium papillosum. Then at Fistral Bay, in a beach presumably 

 contemporaneous with the Baggy Point Eaised Beach, we have 

 Cytlierea chione recorded : and in Torbay Fusiis Jeffrey sianus, 

 associated with TropJion truncatus. It is this association of shells 

 having a northern range with others with a southern range, and the 

 association of a still more decided southern shell with an ice-borne 

 erratic, which is so perplexing. 



I do not propose to trespass on your space with any speculations 

 on the subject. So far as Devonshire is concerned, the problem of 

 the beaches may be treated as a strictly local one, and as such better 

 discussed in provincial publications. A. E. Hunt. 



FOXWORTHY, MORETONHAMPSTEAD. 



9th September, 1905. 



