216 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



tween the one hundred and the seventy-five contours, a bar of small 

 bivalve shells* was discovered, 8 feet below the surface, in a deposit 

 of fine sand. I have not yet found any on this horizon in other loca- 

 lities, but it may be worth while prosecuting the search further. 

 Passing southward marine drift appears to line the shore at about 

 the same elevation from Ulverstone through the grounds of Conis- 

 head Priory to Bardsea. Here they are cut off, and we do not re- 

 cognize them again till we get below Leece, where they are found 

 sweeping over the promontory from east to west .in elongated ridges, 

 one or two of which, by the gradual inroads of the sea, have come to 

 form headlands on the southern shore. 



Coast-line Deposits. — One of these headlands, Rabbit Hill, at 

 Barrow in Purness, saved from the sea by railway constructions, is 

 now rapidly undergoing demolition to form levelled sites for streets, 

 and its long entombed granite boulders thrown out to the light of 

 day. On the south coast of Purness, at Back-House-Close Point,t 

 25 feet raised beaches, containing layers of existing British shells, 

 and abutting against the headland, have in the recollection of persons 

 now living been cut away by the sea. It is the same at Cunninger 

 Point, while in what may have been, so to speak, the recesses of 

 the coast, some still remain; only in their turn to yield eventually 

 to the constant wasting of high tides. Traces of their broken lines 

 occur all the way from Rampside to Aldingham, where they begin to 

 recline on the boulder clay. The former tide-floor presented by 

 this deposit appears to have supplied a clayeyness to the shell and 

 pebble matrix, which renders their extraction, at this particular spot, 

 extremely difficult, the mass being nearly as hard as the boulder 

 clay itself. 



Por the naming of the shells, I am wholly indebted to the kind- 

 ness of my friend Miss Gifford, of Minshead, Somerset : — 



SHELL LIST. 



Murex erinaceus. Turbo (Litorina) rudis. 



Buccinum undatum. Ostrea edulis. 



Buccinum reticulatum. Ostrea (Pecten ) varians. 



Purpura lapillus. Mytillus edidis, 



Turritella terebra. Gardium edule. 



Turbo (Litorina ) litorea. Mactra solida. 



Turbo (Litorina) neritoides. Tellina solidula. 



Turbo (Litorina) rudis was most abundantly found in the hard 

 shell-beds at Aldingham. Of this species, Mr. Woodward remarks, 

 that it frequents a higher region than T. litorea, where it is scarcely 



* From the description, I judge they might be Tellina. 



f Some of the stones in this cliff are striated, leading to the supposition that it might 

 prove to be an outstanding ridge of the boulder clay resting on Permian strata. As I 

 did not discover the fact of their striation on the spot, it must be left undetermined for 

 the present. Stratified beds of sands appeared in the upper part of the cliff, but its face 

 was much obscured by water springs washing the sands down from above. 



