Notices of Memoirs — W. Watson — Black Rock ofKiltearn. 29 



and shingle, forming an undercliff carriage-way into Dover some 

 thirty years back, has now entirely disappeared. 



We may be asked to suggest a remedy, but this, perhaps, is beyond 

 the province of this Memorandum ; but as regards the old stereo- 

 typed plan of building a solid pier out from the shore, for communi- 

 cation therewith from vessels, or for protection of the outfall of a 

 tidal river, it has been suggested that there are numerous cases, 

 where a moving beach has to be crossed, that it would be better to 

 commence the solid work altogether seaward of the shingle " fulls," 

 and connect it with open piling to the shore, and so as to leave the 

 littoral movement of beach uninterfered with. 



As respects groynes, there is hardly a watering-place on our 

 southern coast where they have not become a burning vexata qncestio 

 of the day, and at most of them illustrate the suggestion made more 

 than thirty years back, that groynes cut up a shore into a multitude 

 of bays, with a repletion of material on one side and deep water on 

 the other, and would have had a better substitute in a sea-wall that 

 allowed the shingle to pass freely backwards and forwards along its 

 face. Such was the experience with the frontage of Eomney Marsh, 

 defended by Dymchurch sea-wall, 3^ miles in length, where the old 

 system of groynes, which cut up the frontage into an interminable 

 number of bays, was abandoned about forty years back in favour of 

 the present stone slope. 



The system of groynes at Brighton, for some isolated points, 

 appeared to have answered well when the supply arriving at that 

 town of shingle from the westward was uninterfered with, but a 

 change occurs when the system was continued to Hove, or West 

 Brighton, in thickening quantities. The material arriving was a 

 constantly diminishing one, from the fact that the Shoreham Gas 

 Works, erected under an Act of Parliament on the " live " beach 

 between the harbour and the sea, were found to stand upon a some- 

 what unstable base, with a fickle sea defence, unless supplemented by 

 artificial works. Groynes on an extended scale were erected, which 

 treated West Brighton in the same ungenerous spirit entertained in 

 former days for Rottingdean, for the sake of and advantage of Kemp 

 Town. The encroachment of the sea to the leeward side of the 

 groynes, on the esplanade lawns, has necessitated the erection of an 

 esplanade wall. 



1TOTICES OIE" 1 MBMOIBS. 



Brief Notices of Papers Eead before Section C. Geology, British Association 

 Meeting, Aberdeen, 1885. 



I. — The Chasm called the Black Bock of Kiltearn. 



By William "Watson. 



THIS is a narrow ravine in conglomerate : its length is about 11- 

 mile ; its depth varies from 100 to 130 feet; its breadth at the 

 top varies from 12 to 15 to about 30 feet. The river which flows 

 through the ravine is the Altl-Gninda; it drains Glen Glass (above 

 the ravine) ; the water flows into Cromarty Firth. 



