450 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
side all the way from Torquay to the southern extremity of Livermead Sands, : 
excepting only the small portion of it below the Carbons. Not twenty years 
ago there stood a comfortable cottage in front of Livermead House (o, Tig. 1), 
outside this wall, with an extensive garden still further seaward ; outside this i 
again was the old road I have mentioned, and still beyond this a broad margin 
of cliflP, where I have frequently seen children, inmates of the cottage, at play. 1 
Cliff, road, garden, and cottage are gone, the sea has swallowed the whole, and i 
well-rounded pebbles now cover a tidal strand, above which they once stood. ( 
Kay, more, Neptune too successfully assails the sea-wall every winter ; more j 
than once has he been known to have entire possession of the turnpike-road at i 
this point, and to lay claim, with no empty, umneaning threat, to Livermead » 
House itself ; and though, hitherto, the engineer has succeeded in expelling | 
him, it has always been at a considerable expense of skill, labour, and money, t 
and, after all, by what may be termed a sort of compromise. So continually t 
is the wall undergoing reparation, and so great the quantity of limestone | 
quarried somewhere in the interior for this purpose, that I have frequently t 
thought the contending parties must have come to an arrangement somewhat " 
of this nature : "Neptune agrees not to waste the coast on condition that the f. 
engineer shall waste the interior to an almost equal amount, and, further, that ! 
if the latter allow the smallest crevice to occur in the sea-wall, the former will j 
feel himself at liberty to take opportunity thereof to re-open his claim on the ' 
coast." 
At the southern extremity of Livermead Sands stands a large house (r, Fig. ' 
1), known as Livermead Cottage ; it is outside both the turnpike-road and the ' 
old road so frequently mentioned ; it beetles over the low red cliff faced by k ] 
sea-wall, on which it stands in jeopardy every hour. The sea has several times . 
made abortive attempts to insulate it, but it is in all probability a question of 
time only. 
A terrace, or platform, of denudation (v w, Pig. 2) extends two hundred and 
sixty feet from the insular extremity of the Carbons to low-water-mark, the 
ordinary level of which is indicated by the dotted line w ?/,sisis the level of 
ordinary spring-tide high-water by the line / d. This terrace may be taken as 
a rough minimum measure of the amount of the retrocession of the coast here 
since the sea and land stood at their present relative level ; a minimum cer- 
tainly, as in this part of the bay the water is very shallow, and a continuation 
of the platform, constantly covered by the sea, yet within the grinding action 
of the waves, probably extends at least fully five hundred feet further. 
The following seem to be the successive stages through which tlie work of 
erosion commonly passes in Torbay. The sea forms a series of small holes at 
some little distance from one another near the base of the existing cliff ; most 
of these, as might be expected, occur where joints or other fissures afford 
facilities for the operation ; nevertheless, such holes, and not a few, are met 
with where no points or lines of weakness of this kind exist ; some other pecu- 
liarity in the rock, for example, the dislodgement of a large pebble from the 
conglomerate, or some peculiar exposure to the action of the waves, may have 
determined the situation. When large enough to attract attention, an observer 
guilty of very absurd comparisons might call them ill-formed, gigantic, unsocial 
pigeon-holes. A few years at most enlarges them in every direction, and con- 
verts them into " ovens," which, in process of time, are in like manner con- 
verted into chambers and galleries ; the latter especially, where pre-existing 
divisional planes influence the direction of the work of excavation. Laterd 
enlargement takes place necessarily at the expense of the partitions between 
the chambers, until a breach is effected and rapidly enlarged in them, and the 
whole cliff is found to be honeycombed into a labyrinth of halls and galleries, 
the roof being supported by massive and fantastic pillars. In this state many 
of them receive the name of " thunder-holes," from the bellowing noise of the 
