Henry Dewey — Raised Beach of North Devon. 155 



beach consists of pebbles of slate, hard sandstone, vein - quartz, 

 quartzite, and chalk-flints. Among the beach stones the familiar 

 boulder of red granite lies on the raised beach platform. It 

 resembles a gneissose granite from near Cruinard Bay, Ross-shire ; 

 other boulders are found near by which appear to have travelled from 

 the "West of Scotland.^ 



If these boulders are from Scotland (and they are certainly not 

 derived from the West of England) it is difficult to assign any agency 

 other than ice as their transporters. If ice-borne the seas of Scotland 

 were Arctic and those of Southern England cold. 



We have, then, the following sequence of deposits corresponding 

 with a sequence of climates — 



Bed of rounded stones (?). 



Head(?). 



Cemented sand (warm temperate). 



Raised beach, with boulders (cold). 



The climatic conditions in which the bed of large stones was deposited 

 is not indicated at this locality, but is suggested by a similar deposit 

 near Fremington. 



On the west side of Fremington Pill a low cliff is covered by beach 

 stones and 'head', with a bed of clay and stones resting on top. 

 Some of these stones bear deep scratches, are flat, with one side 

 smooth and the other rough, while others are smooth both sides. The 

 striae are roughly parallel to one another, and each is an elongated 

 wedge trenching the stone and ending abruptly at its widest part. 

 The clay in which they rest is brownish and loamy. They closely 

 resemble striated stones from glacial till, and had they occurred in 

 a glaciated district would be accepted as of glacial origin. But as 

 there is a doubt as to the age of the clay it may be objected that the 

 striae were produced by some agency other than ice. The evidence 

 for their glacial origin is, however, as strong as that adduced for the 

 glacial origin of the Palaeozoic tills, which is generally, though not 

 unanimously, accepted by geologists. 



A bed of clay in the immediate neighbourhood of the section has 

 long been worked for the ' Barum ' ware. It is a fine, smooth, 

 mottled clay and contains large boulders. One of them is a hyper- 

 sthene andesite resembling the tholeite of Loch Craignish, Argyllshire, 

 while another is a granophyre.^ The clay was therefore deposited 

 under such conditions as would permit large erratic boulders to be 

 dropped in it. It may be Boulder-clay as Maw ^ thought possible, 

 and if so supports the view of the glacial origin of the striated stones. 

 The railway cutting a few yards north of the section described shows 

 current-bedded sand resting on the raised beach and itself covered 

 with ' head '. Hence the sequence in descending order is — 



Bed of clay, with striated stones and boulders (? Arctic) . 



Head. 



Cemented sand (warm temperate). 



Eaised beach (cold). 



^ Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xxi, p. 429, 1910. 

 ^ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. , vol. xx, p. 445. 



