GUMMING ON THE ISLE OP MAN. 337 



the southern partly foreign and partly insular, but there are evi- 

 dently two or three varieties of it. In the south of the island near 

 the Stack of Scarlet, there are also rolled fragments of a gritty 

 sandstone probably belonging to the coal-measures of Cumberland. 

 We seem therefore on the whole warranted in concluding, that the 

 transport has taken place for the most part from the E.N.E., or 

 thence round to N.N.E. ; and this view would hardly be invalidated 

 by finding occasionally rocks from other points of the compass (as 

 for instance, if such should be the case, chalk flints from the north 

 of Ireland*); since supposing the general contour of the surround- 

 ing countries not to have been greatly different from the present, we 

 can imagine a current from the N.N.W. drifting materials into this 

 area, and mixing them with the products of more powerful currents 

 from a direction between east and north. 



Mr. Strickland has noticed certain remarkable concretionary 

 masses occurring at Point Cranstal, four miles north of Ramsey, 

 consisting of the fine sands (which have been mentioned as occur- 

 ring in patches in the boulder deposit), " cemented together by car- 

 bonate of lime, extremely hard and even sonorous, presenting some- 

 times a stalactitic appearance with a pebble attached to the larger 

 end of the concretion, at others the form of flat tabular masses, 

 mammillated on their surfaces or perforated obliquely by tubular 

 cavities f." He suggests that currents of water (or possibly of wind 

 operating during ebb-tide) setting in a certain direction may have 

 disposed the sand in ridges parallel to that direction, and that the 

 carbonate of lime may have been afterwards attracted into these 

 ridges in preference to the intermediate portions. I am however of 

 opinion, that the formation is for the most part of a recent character 

 and of the nature of a true stalactite. Having visited the spot in 

 the spring of 1845 after copious rains, I observed that nearly 

 similar stalactitic masses were being formed in the gullies and at 

 the base of the cliff", by the percolation of the waters amongst the 

 alternating beds of sand, gravel and loam. But a difficulty pre- 

 sented itself in the circumstance that these masses occur in nearly 

 horizontal positions at various heights in the cliff*. On the western 

 coast also, in the neighbourhood of Ballaugh, we meet with similar 

 formations ; and on the south coast, at the mouth of the Strandhall 

 brook which runs into the sea between Poolvash and Kentraugh 

 near the lime-kilns, we have a bed of sand of the pleistocene age 

 resting upon a layer of the loam of the boulder formation. It has 

 been observed by Dr. Macculloch, that the loam of this island is so 

 largely charged with lime as to render it for the most part unsuited 

 to brick-making. It seems reasonable to conclude that it was formed 

 by the grinding up of the subjacent beds of limestone and shale. 

 Underground currents of water permeating the sands which are in- 

 terposed between the beds of loam, carrying along with them par- 

 ticles thence derived, and becoming mixed with the finer sand and 

 minute fragments of shells, have a tendency to deposit the same, and 



* See the previous note with reference to tliis point, 

 t Proceedings, ante cit. p. 9. 



