B. B. Woochvard— Drift, etc., Newquay, Cornwall. 83 



On the south side of the Cove (X) the pebble beach is again met 

 •with on the platform, while the indurated sands above seem partly 

 eroded, but mostly masked by slips of the top soil. The southern 

 ascent from this spot to the projecting point (Y) is capped by a hill- 

 wash-dune containing a few land shells of the modern type. The 

 talus, which stretches right down the face of the cliff here, is derived 

 from this dune. The platform is again well seen at the base of the 

 cliff on the south side of this point. 



Just beyond to the south is an inaccessible shelf-like promontory, 

 reaching half-way up the cliff and covered with bracken and ferns. 

 Save for a few stunted examples by the wall of the ruined fish cellars 

 on Towan Head, this is the only spot on the headland where the 

 bracken can be seen. 



jSTo shell-bearing beds occur to the south of this, but there is 

 a patch of 'head' to be seen filling a hollow in the killas above the 

 eastern end of the recess in Town Beach occupied by the Laundry (Z). 



One other locality remains to be mentioned. On the slope of the 

 hill rising from the town to the top of the golf links on the south side 

 of Crantock Street and just opposite the opening of Jubilee Avenue, 

 a pit (7) in a field shows 6 feet of sand with land shells belonging to 

 the last phase of the hill-wash-dunes. The bottom of this deposit is 

 not shown, while the surface simply forms part of the general hill 

 slope and gives no indication of its probable extent. The source of 

 this sand is presumably Pistral Bay : it shows but little hill-wash soil 

 in its composition. 



A word as to the age of these deposits. The hill-wash-dunes are 

 mainly, if not altogether Holocene. Whether any portion of the 

 Selix nemoralis zone at their base be Pleistocene is not clear, though 

 if the human vestiges should prove to belong to the Palaeolithic 

 period some part would be. The moUuscan remains shed no light on 

 this question. 



The ' head ' is manifestly the local representative of the cold period 

 known in other parts of the country as Glacial. 



Then as to the old marine (mostly indurated) sands that underlie 

 the 'head.' These are nowhere, as some have asserted, interstratified 

 with the 'head.' IS'or are they 'blown sands.' They compare in 

 composition very closely with the existing sands of the foreshore of 

 Fistral Bay,^ and are coarser than the sands found in the hill- wash- 

 dunes, or than those at Perranzabuloe, judging from specimens kindly 

 sent me by Mr. Gr. Earthy for comparison. Their bedding planes, 

 except of course where current action is shown, slope seawards, just 

 as the present beach does. Dr. Paris- aptly, so far as the rock is 

 concerned, compares them to the celebrated Gruadeloupe specimen 

 containing the skeleton, and hunted in vain for human remains in 

 them. Where these indurated sands rest directly on the irregular 

 surface of the killas they are bedded in among the interstices as 

 a water-deposited sand would be and as a blown sand deposit would 



1 I have to thank my young friend Miss Dorothy Joos for sending me on samples 

 ■of these. 



2 Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornwall, vol. i (1818), p. 6. 



