le 
skirting the beach and rising to a height, it may be, of 20 feet. Many of 
these are large enough to fill a wheel-barrow and they extend for more 
than two miles along the S.E. shore of the bay. The pebbles have evidently 
been derived from the Carboniferous beds to the S. W. near Hartland and 
Clovelly, but why they are piled just here and nowhere else around the 
coast is at first difficult to explain. 
Like the famous Chesil Beach at Portland they have probably been 
broken away from the Cliffs to the S.W, and rolled along by the united 
action of tides and currents until the line of shore opposed their farther 
progress, when they were left piled one on another in a huge bank 
skirting the beach. 
The ridge projects northwards into the Estuary which seems to have 
been somewhat deflected from its original course by the tendency of the 
mound of pebbles to extend itself in that direction. The pebbles also 
underlie the beach for some distance projecting through the sand. They 
are too large to be moved by ordinary waves but in storm time they are 
often thrown over from the windward to the leeward side of the bank. 
They thus mark the limit of the sea during storms and their position seems 
to be a proof that the land at this spot is either at rest or subsiding. 
Were elevation taking place they would be gradually lifted out of the 
reach of the sea and would be found further inland. But fringing the 
shore as they do they seem to show that with every successive inch of 
subsidence their line is constantly set back by the advancing waves, or 
that on a stationary coast they retain an unvarying position. 
Evidences of a former lower level of the land may be found in the raised 
beaches that fringe the coast — relics that have escaped the denuding action 
of the waves during a period of elevation. One of the best of them may 
be found on rounding Saunton Down and coming into the bay at the 
north. It is composed of cemented sand and lies horizontally upon the 
highly-inclined Carboniferous or Devonian beds. Some parts of it are 
hard but others being soft it readily weathers away leaving fragments 
adhering to the older rocks. Pieces of these horizontal beds may be found 
as much as 30 feet above high water mark. They contain a large 
proportion of comminuted shell so small as to be scarcely recognizable but 
apparently belonging to recent species. I could not find any sufficiently 
large to be identified. 
But perhaps the most interesting part of the coast is to be found on the 
beach itself. In the course of a morning's walk from Appledore over the 
pebble ridge along the sand I noticed several spots near the water's edge 
