56 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1901 



level surface hy the prolonged action of the waves of the 

 North Sea. Perhaps the diagrams on Plate X. may serve 

 to make some of these points clearer. 



Then the land rose, step by step, with long pauses between 

 each uprise. During these stationary intervals ledges and 

 shelves of rock along the sea margin were carved by the 

 waves, as before. Several remnants of these remain to this 

 day, and a trained eye can easily detect at least two such 

 shelves upon The Bass, upon the sides next the land. When 

 the upheaving force had elevated the land to within between 

 twenty and thirty feet of its present level, a large number 

 of sea-caverns were shaped by the waves out of the rocks 

 forming the coast line of that time. Nobody has yet ventured 

 to suggest any explanation of the reason why sea-caverns 

 should have been shaped by the sea on so much more extensive 

 a scale at this time than either before or since ; but I do 

 not think that there can be much doubt about that fact, nor 

 that even the caverns whose floors are now at sea-level were 

 initiated at the earlier period referred to, and have been 

 deepened by later marine action. This is probably the case 

 with the cavern which runs through the southern half of The 

 Bass from east to west. See the diagrams above referred to. 



Since the sea-cavern period, and down to, perhaps, just 

 before the Roman Invasion (but not since) there have been 

 several minor uplifts, the intervals between which have been 

 of sufficient length to permit of the formation of some minor 

 of those upraised shelves of rock which are called raised 

 beaches. On one of these shelves the Old Inn at Canty Bay 

 has been built. One of date still later is the shelf upon 

 which the boats returning from The Bass land the people 

 when they happen to alight on the east side of the Bay. 



In this shelf the sea is still at work day and night and 

 all the year round in deepening and widening the joint planes, 

 in giving rise to marine pot holes, and in accomplishing other 

 kinds of erosion such as have been at work at former times 

 in combining to shape the older terraces. The successive 

 stages in the process can be easily followed ; and when the 

 Club met last at this spot, a considerable amount of interest 

 was evinced by its members in studying^ the evjdepqes of 

 (jontemporaneous ei-osioo. 



