664 



PK0F. T. M' KENNY HUGHES ON THE ANCIENT 



to Baggy Point. The lower part only would be washed by the 

 waves, and the upper part would appear to be beyond the reach of 

 any tide, and not in the way of any possible accumulation of blown 

 sand. But when the dunes were further forward they must have 

 abutted, as now, against the hill at their north end, and the sand 

 was blown up its flank as it is now near Saunton Court. 



Along the sandy roadway down to the shore from Saunton Court 

 the wind often strips off part of the sand and shows that the talus 

 sometimes creeps down over the dunes and sometimes is covered by 

 the blown sand. So there are alternations of stony earth, sand, 

 shells, &c. in the upper part, just as we see in the ancient cliff 

 further west. 



It is easy enough to explain the slight difference in the character 

 of the sand in the old sand-cliff and in the more modern dunes. 

 The newer sand consists more largely of comminuted shell, whereas 

 the acidulated water percolating from the hill-side has destroyed 

 some of the shell in the sand abutting against it and has thrown 

 the carbonate of lime down again where it has been exposed to 

 evaporation. 



That this process has been going on is shown by the casts of 

 shells found in the solidified sand ; and that the precipitation has 

 taken place elsewhere is shown by the bands of calcite a quarter or 

 half an inch thick which have formed along some of the more open 

 divisional planes, by the crystals of calcspar which line some of the 

 cavities where shells have been, and by the solidified masses of 

 sand described above. 



So, I take it, this cliff of sand and angular stony debris on the 

 shore south of Saunton Down and west of Middle Borough is no 

 raised beach, but only the run-of-the-hill or talus overlapping and 

 dovetailing into the top of the sand which was driven by the wind 

 up the hillside when the sandy shore-line of Barnstaple Bay stood 

 a little further west, and that the lower part of it, where the blown 

 sand contains beds of shingle and marine shells, is only the part 

 where the waves occasionally rushed over the base of the sand- 

 dunes, and does not extend above the height now w T ashed by the 

 sea. To put it shortly, what is above sea-level is not beach, and 

 what is beach is still within reach of the sea. 



Resting apparently on the bare rock under this sandy deposit 

 there are many large boulders, most of them composed of the gritty 

 beds in the Devonian. There are, however, now visible three other 

 boulders, the original source of which is not so easy to determine 

 with certainty. 



The first occurs about | mile west of Middle Borough. It is 

 a great mass of yellowish-white gneissose granite, the part ex- 

 posed measuring some 8x6x6 feet. The surface is somewhat 

 decomposed and exfoliates in places. The boulder is capped by some 

 of the talus, not, it appeared to me, the original mass of which the 

 cliff was composed, but only a portion slipped from it. 



The second boulder (fig. 5) occurs about halfway along the shore 

 south of Saunton Down. It rises out of a little pool between the 



