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indented and irregular surface of the older formations. It presents 

 a cliff towards the sea, in which beds of calcareous grit, sandstone, 

 and shingle are seen perfectly stratified. The bottom of the de- 

 posit is chiefly composed of indurated shingles resting on the ledges 

 of the older rocks, and filling up their inequalities. Through the 

 whole cliff, but especially in the indurated grits, shells are abun-. 

 dantly dispersed, identical in species with those now living on the 

 coast, and well preserved, though sometimes waterworn. 



The authors point out that these beds cannot have been formed by 

 accumulations of blown sand. They demonstrate an elevation of 

 the coast during the modern period; and there are phsenomena both 

 on the north and south coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall, which 

 afford proofs of modern changes in the level of the land, both of 

 upheaval and depression. The raised beach of Hope's Nose, 

 correctly described by Mr. Austen, is the most striking instance 

 in South Devon. 



The quantity of rise of land in the modern period is from ten to 

 forty feet in South Devon and Cornwall, nearly seventy feet in 

 North Devon, while in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Shropshire there 

 are marine deposits with recent shells at the height of from 300 to 

 500 feet above the sea. 



It is natural to inquire what changes the surface of the dry 

 land in England may have undergone during the occurrence of such 

 upward and downward movements. Perhaps some observations 

 lately made by Mr. Bowerbank in the south of the Isle of Wight 

 may elucidate this point. He has given us an account of a bed of 

 chalky detritus, containing recent land shells, at Gore Cliff. This 

 bed is ten feet thick, and rests immediately upon chalk marl. 

 Many of the shells, which are plentifully scattered through it, retain 

 their colour. As the deposit ranges to the foot of St. Catherine's 

 Down, it is possible that the waste and denudation of that chalk 

 hill may have supplied the materials. I have lately seen similar 

 detritus resting on the chalk with flints, and arranged in numerous 

 thin layers in the section exposed in cutting the railroad at Win- 

 chester, where a black layer of peaty earth and carbonized wood 

 intersects thin layers of white chalk rubble, from twenty to thirty 

 feet thick. Such appearances are, in fact, very general in chalk 

 districts ; a bed of flints not waterworn occurring on the highest 



