500 F. R. Cowper Reed—Coastal Features, Co. Waterford. 
drift-formed cliffs recedes inland behind the large triangular area of 
grass-grown hummocky land which projects seawards at Bass Point; 
this area represents a comparatively recent accumulation of sand which 
has been built outwards for some 200 yards from the base of the cliffs 
so as to narrow the channel of Rinnashark Harbour leading into the 
Back Strand lagoon. 
Outside the mouth of the harbour the base of the drift cliffs is 
washed by the sea at high tide, and their height has increased to over 
20 feet. Their lower 10-20 feet are here composed of wind-blown 
false-bedded sand, and on this rests 2-3 feet of yellow Boulder-clay. 
A layer of drift sand 1 foot thick rests on the latter, and then come 
the subsoil and soil. This succession can be traced for about 
75-100 yards along the shore, but the thick lower sands then die 
out, and a dark greyish clay, 4-8 feet thick, comes in beneath the 
Boulder-clay ; it is full of small angular fragments of black slate, and 
in some places rests directly on the Old Red Sandstone, but in others 
on very coarse ‘head’ composed of large angular or subangular 
fragments of the Old Red conglomerates, flags, and sandstones of the 
locality. This head must undoubtedly be correlated with Messrs. 
Wright & Mufi’s Lower Head, and is of strictly local origin; it 
reposes directly at this spot on the smoothed pre-Glacial platform 
which has been cut across the alternating succession of hard and soft 
beds of the Old Red Sandstone. 
Portions of the rock-platform, more or less dissected by recent 
marine erosion, can be observed under the cliffs, and it does not 
appear that it was in the first instance planed down to a uniform level 
surface. Its average height above present high-water mark is 
3-4 feet, but in places, owing to its uneven surface, it is as much as 
10 feet. 
As for the pre-Glacial cliff, it is obvious that it does not run quite 
parallel to the present coastline; and it seems to lie a little distance 
inland, being indicated by an abrupt change in the declivity of the 
hillside, and frequently also by a line of small scars at the top of the 
nearly horizontal shelf or terrace of drift which extends outwards as 
a distinct feature of varying width along much of the eastern side of 
Rinnashark Harbour to end abruptly in the present cliffs of drift, 
30-40 feet high. Post-Glacial erosion has not as yet been sufficient 
here to cut back the drift deposits as far as the old cliff. 
The Boulder-clay (of the usual type) increases in thickness as we 
proceed southwards along the coast, and attains a thickness of 20 feet 
in the cliffs. Here and there above it we meet with patches or 
pockets of what may be regarded as the representative of the Upper 
Head in the shape of a deposit of small angular or subangular 
fragments of Old Red Sandstone closely packed together, and with 
a thickness of about 2-3 feet. But usually the sole deposit above the 
Boulder-clay is blown sand of recent date. 
Outside Rinnashark Harbour the pre-Glacial cliff curves out 
westwards so as to meet the present sea-margin, and the drift 
deposits are then seen banked up against the solid Old Red Sandstone, 
which from this point onwards forms the modern cliffs. Except in 
a few sheltered spots or original coves the pre-Glacial cliff has been 
