SO-CALLED " KAISED BEACHES " IN DEVON. 441 



Crustacea, &c. confusedly with the stony chips which have already 

 accumulated there. 



Attempting now to appl}^ the observations of the Naturalists who 

 accompanied the Is'ares Expedition to the phenomena of the Hope's 

 Nose and Thatcher beaches, it will be presumed that the British 

 Channel was encumbered by floe-ice, and its bays margined by an 

 ice-foot, at a time when the so-called beaches were accumulated, — 

 and that they are composed, partly of chips of local limestone falling 

 into an ice-foot-formcd trench, such as that already described, and 

 partly of such shells and fragments of shells as were thrown into 

 the trench in question by the sea. 



If that be so, the following answers may be given to the questions 

 already proposed : — 



1. The limestone chips which constitute almost the entire mass 

 of the stony deposit are sharply angular because they were 

 weathered out by frost from the cliffs above the so-called " beach." 

 2. These chips have not lain long enough under sea-water to 

 become either rolled, bored, or incrusted by Annelids. Such sea- 

 A^ater as, entering the trench, rushed this way and that, with more 

 or less violence, at every tide, might give the contained mass a rude 

 stratification, but could not convert the chips into pebbles or afford 

 time for the growth of borers and Annelids. 3. Such fragments of 

 bored limestone pebbles as occur in the deposit were thrown into 

 the trench by the sea, after the pebbles from which they were 

 derived had been triturated by floe-ice. 4. The stones on which 

 Annelidan incrustations occur were probably thrown by the sea 

 into the *' trench " ; and there, protected from attrition by their 

 sheltered position, they preserved such incrustations as would have 

 been almost immediately lost on a beach. 5. The bulk of the 

 stony constituents of the deposit is local, having fallen from the 

 cliffs above, under the influence of frost. The few foreign stones it 

 contains have been thrown in by the sea. 6. There could be no 

 real " stratification " of its contents in a trench, now full and now 

 empty of water, into Avhich chips from the overhanging cliffs were 

 continually falling, and to which every tide and every storm 

 furnished each its quota of " jetsam." 7. The contribution which 

 the sea in rough weather would make to the deposit in the " trench '' 

 would consist for the most part of shells derived, in a more or less 

 triturated condition, from the Laminarian zone and somewhat deeper 

 water. 8. After being broken by the action of floe-ice on the shore, 

 these shells were (luickly thrown into the trench ; and some of the 

 rock-dwellers would be more, and otliers less damaged by the floes 

 before the waves took them in hand. 9. These, forming part of 

 the "jetsam" thrown during storms into the trench from com- 

 paratively deep water, were insignificant in quantity relatively to 

 the stony matter always falling into it, and to the rock-dwcllers 

 which the floes were always crushing and putting at the immediate 

 disposition of the waves. 10. Whether broken or unbroken, nearly 

 all the shells were thrown into the trench " alive," in which condi- 

 tion shells arc seldom found either bored or ijicrusted. 1 1. Coming 



