297 



Immediately north of the Bluff the last-described bed is seen to rest on the 

 Freshwater Series — the lowest member of the Miocene System — which rises from 

 beneath the fossiliferous beds and, within a short distance, becomes the sole 

 feature of the cliffs. In this outcrop these fluviatile beds, in their upper por- 

 tions, consist of brownish, fine-grained sands, and in their lower, of a white 

 laminated clay with bands of brilliant brick-red colour following the bedding 

 planes, the whole making a cliff of about 35 feet in height, but the base of the 

 beds is not seen. They extend northward for about a quarter of a mile, in 

 gentle flexures, and disappear in that direction under the Pleistocene clays, 

 which latter occupy an uneven line of erosion excavated on the upper surface 

 of the older freshwater series. At this point of junction a double unconformity 

 is visible — the Pleistocene (mottled) clays, in a steep plane of erosion, cut out 

 the Older Tertiary ; while the Pleistocene clays, again, are eroded in an irregular 

 line by the newer (Recent) reddish clays and gravels that rest upon them (see 

 text fig. 2). 



The junction of the marine and freshwater beds, in this section, is marked 

 by very peculiar features ; there has, apparently, been an interaction between 

 the two dissimilar beds ; either the iron in the brownish freshwater sands 

 penetrated and discoloured the lowest layers of the marine deposits, or the 

 glauconite contained in the latter has become oxidised by means of infiltrating 

 water and thus produced a peculiar piebald discolouration. The rock is brown and 

 white in irregular and sharply-defined patches, the one colour interpenetrating 

 the other in such a manner as sometimes to simulate organic remains. 



The sea is making rapid encroachments along this line of coast. The soft 

 nature of the cliffs and the narrow foreshore favour the action of the waves. 

 A conspicuous sea-stack, known as the Whiten Rock (or Table Rock), situated 

 about 50 yards from the headland, and which had, apparently, remained unaltered 

 during the period of European occupation of the country, was, in 1911, washed 

 away, by which one of the most picturesque features of the coast was 

 destroyed. 



Pleistocene and Recent Beds in Section C. 

 In such places along the coast, where the Cambrian beds are strong and act 

 as barriers to the encroachment of the sea, the softer overlying rocks usually 

 retreat from the edge of the cliff and form a second cliff with moderate slopes 

 and rounded outlines. This is the case between Curlew Point and Rocky Point. 

 Immediately to the southward of the last-named Point the clays, of two ages, 

 form the main cliffs and are set well back from the beach, reaching a height 

 of about 150 feet. The older of the two, consisting of mottled (Pleistocene) 

 clays and sandstones, rests unconformably on each, in turn, of the three older 

 formations — the Cambrian slates, the freshwater sands, and the marine Pliocene 

 — that occupy the area between the beach and the main cliffs. They exhibit 

 features that are identical with the other outcrops of these beds along the coast 

 and also inland. They vary from a very stiff clay to laminated sandstones, - 

 and, in places, contain lenticles of gravel made up principally of pebbles derived 

 by erosion from the local exposures of purple slates and sandstones. The beds 

 of sandstone (which are usually of a deep-red colour, or mottled red and grey), 

 by virtue of their superior hardness often make prominent outcrops with vertical 

 faces. 



Resting on the variegated clays and sandstones is a greenish-coloured clay 

 that is less resisting to the weather and has a slope lower than the mottled clays. 

 This upper clay bed is capped by nodular travertine, white marly subsoil, and 

 surface soil ; the limestone is probably a precipitate from surface waters that 

 drain over the Brighton limestone series that outcrop at a short distance from 

 the coast on the landward slopes. 



