Day — Raised Beach, near Weston-super-Mare. 117 



Over this Eaised Beach is a mass of blown sand, precisely similar 

 in character to that now accumulating, within the distance of a mile 

 or two, at the bottom of the neighbouring bay. The road from 

 Weston to Kewstoke passes partly through this sand, and partly 

 through an extensive mass of angular ''head" that rests upon it, and 

 forms a talus at the foot of an ancient and now inland cliff. In this 

 instance we see that after the Eaised Beach was formed, in a similar 

 position and under similar conditions to the present one, a slight 

 elevation must have occurred, during which the Sand-dunes were 

 heaped upon it ; and that, subsequently^, quantities of angular frag- 

 ments were dislodged from the upper cliff and piled upon the dunes. 

 The fact that these angular fragments do not occur scattered through- 

 out the sand is important, because it tends to show that the head is 

 not an accumulation of all times, but onq belonging to a distinct 

 period, when some agency was in action which was not so in the 

 Sand epoch. Whether that agency be still in force may be doubted ; 

 the head probably is slightly increased by the occasional dislodge- 

 ment by frost of blocks from the cliff, even at the present day ; but 

 I am inclined to think that the bulk of the mass is decidedly the 

 result of the same power, in much greater activity during a former 

 period, intervening between our own times and that of the Sands. 

 If this be the fact, then the formation of the present Sand-dunes in 

 Kewstoke Bay is, at least partly, subsequent to the accumulation of 

 the head, and we have thus here two sets of dunes, just as we have 

 in Cornwall and in the Bas Boulonnais, the ages of which are 

 separated by a marked interval of time. The uniformity of these 

 successions at spots so far removed from each other deserves at least 

 a passing notice. 



Another point of interest in the Weston Eaised Beach is its level 

 relatively to the lowest of the ossiferous caverns of Somersetshire. 

 Of all the bone-caves yet explored in the neighbourhood, the one 

 situate nearest to the level of the sea is that of Uphill, two miles 

 from Weston. It is placed, I should say (speaking from recollec- 

 tion) at about 40 feet above the present high- water level (fig. 2). 

 Assuming that this den was occupied by the Cave-fauna contempo- 

 raneously with the formation of the Eaised Beach, it must at that 



distinctly-marked forms of teeth from the Kent's Hole Cave, the smaller of these are 

 identical with those from the "Weston Raised Beach. They may be the teeth of 

 Professor Owen's Asinus fossilis, the fossil Ass or Zebra {v. Brit. Foss. Mammals, 

 p. 397, fig. 158). The only carnivorous teeth from this beach in my possession is one 

 of Hycena spelcea, the Cave Hysena, and one of Canis viilpes, the Fox. The occur- 

 rence of so many remains of the horse in this deposit reminded me of an anecdote 

 told me by the late Mr. Atkinson, the celebrated Orienial traveller, of the cunning 

 with which wolves will avaO. themselves of the physical difl&culties of a country the 

 more speedily to run down the horse. The pursued and pursuers being well matched 

 in speed, the latter so arrange themselves that they gradually turn the frightened 

 animal towards the nearest morass. Once therein, his speed is slackened, and his 

 enemies have time to gather themselves up for the fatal spring. May not the instinct 

 of the wolf of bygone days have prompted him to use the ancient cliff, as his Siberian 

 successor does the marshy ground, as a means of more sm-ely and swiftly reaching his 

 prey ? The terrified horse was driven to the edge of and over the precipice, which 

 his foes then descended at their convenience to feast upon the mangled carcase. 



