G. Poulett Scrope — On Pretended Raised Beaches. 541 



parently made earth on their brows " (p. 66). Of course; and this 

 " made earth," or, in other words, silt and soil, with land shells, fine 

 gravel and small stones, loosened by the plough from the surface- 

 slope above, and washed down by the rains until some hedge, or 

 wall, or even less trifling boundary, more or less horizontal, checked 

 the downward wash of surface matter, will be found, if I mistake 

 not, to form the substance of all these teiTaces and banks — except 

 where some harder stratum crops out from the hill-side, and gives 

 a support to the arable terrace above. 



PiQ, 4. — Teeraces neae Llangollen, as seen prom the hill north of Llantysilio 

 Railway Station. 



No one, of course, disputes the existence of true sea-cliffs and 

 escarpments, or of raised sea-beaches on some of the coast-lines of 

 our island, or that some of the latter may penetrate its estuaries, and 

 be found at considerable heights above the present tidal level. 

 Where sufficient evidence of these latter facts is produced, they are, 

 and will be, readily accepted by all geologists. It is to the innu- 

 merable minor banks and terraces (popularly called balks and 

 lynchets) which Mr. Mackintosh truly describes as scoring the sides 

 and reaching to the summits of many inland hills in the Cretaceous 

 and Oolitic, and other formations of our island, that my remarks 

 refer. These, I believe, to be of artificial origin, — to be owing to 

 the disturbing action of the plough and the mattock on the surface- 

 slopes, aided by downward rain-carriage of the loosened soil — a pro- 

 cess which is visibly going on whei'ever a hill-side is under cultiva- 

 tion. And I look on Mr. Mackintosh's notion of their being 

 " raised sea-beaches " as a preposterous theory without a shadow 

 of foundation. 



On the whole, it is evident that before Mr. Mackintosh can be ac- 

 cepted as a reliable authovity by his readers on the " Causes of Denu- 

 dation, and the origin of Natural Scenery throughout England and the 

 World," he must unlearn many of his present notions upon the '•' very 

 limited power of atmospheric," and the almost exclusive agency of 

 "marine denudation," in shaping the surface of our continents, which 

 compose the substance of his recent volume. If as a lecturer he repeats 

 this theory of denudation to an agricultural audience in the southern 



