346 LAMPLUGH : ON THE SUPPOSED RAISED BEACH AT SALTBURN. 
is everywhere, both on the coast and in the interior, strong evidence 
that all the low ground south of the Tees (except the new land at sea 
level due to the accretion of warp, etc.) has been under subacrial 
conditions continuously from the close of the great glaciation to the 
present day. 
With this difficulty in mind, I sought to examine the dej)osit 
some years ago when investigating the drift-sections of the coast. 
But the exposures seen by Dr. Veitch had been covered up, and I 
could make out nothing except that there was a terrace-like feature, 
covered with sandy soil, in the cliff of boulder-clay on the western side 
of the beck, where the ravine is truncated by the shore-line. From 
its sheltered and recessed position, however, it seemed unlikely that 
the terrace could have been cut by the sea. 
On revisiting Saltburn in the early summer of the year 1917, 
I found that excavations had been made right across the terrace, and 
also along the sloping cliff on the opposite side of the beck, behind 
Old Saltburn, where Dr. Veitch found the shells that he regarded as a 
further indication of the * beach.' These excavations afforded a 
most advantageous opportunity for examining the deposit, and this, 
by ])erniission of the military authorities, I was able to do. 
The excavations north and west of the " hair-])in ' bend in the 
road down from the Zetland Hotel to the beach and bridge were made 
along the north-western part of the terrace, and were continued beyond 
its termination in the boulder-clay slope of the outer cliff. They were 
about 5 ft. deep, and were for the most part entirely in sand, but 
touched boulder-clay at the bottom at one place, and also showed the 
sand ending off against a sloping bank of boulder-clay where the 
terrace-like feature disappeared. There were no beach-pebbles in the 
sand, even where it was seen to rest on boulder-clay ; but in one 
place it contained a thin streak of small bits of shale. A few weathered 
marine shells, mostly Littorina, were scattered among the sand, and 
in the upper part it contained small land shells ( Helix and Pupa ?). A 
2>iece of rotten wood, 3 or 4 inches long, was also noticed. 
The excavations south and east of the same road, both within 
and to the south of the ' hair-pin ' bend, revealed the structure of 
the remainder of the terrace, up to its southward termination in the 
of Kedcar, some of the lighter marine waste is always pushed above 
high water mark by storm- waves, and onshore winds, and its occurrence 
at this low level is no proof of submergence. 
