12 James Burham — The “ Karnes ” of Neicport, Ffe. 
falling on it would soon find or form little channels, which would 
grow to small and then larger streams as they ran seaward ; great 
streams like the Motray would soon cut deep and broad courses, 
continually widened and lowered as the stream wound backwards 
and forwards on its tortuous seaward way. Düring a great part of 
the time that has elapsed since the elevation of the land, the Motray 
has evidently confined its channel to the north side of its valley, 
scooping out a broad and deep hollow, leaving the great flat-topped 
Käme at Straiton to record the vast amount of matter it has ex- 
cavated, its fortification-like front being due to indentations caused 
by the windings of the river, which at present flows close to the 
foot of this great terrace. While a large stream like the Motray 
cleared out a broad plain, tiny rivulets cut narrow but ever-deepening 
channels, the loose rubbish sliding down their banks frequently 
compelling them to change their courses, and so isolating the various 
mounds and ridges, the rain falling on the loose materials would 
readily obliterate any appearance of vertical cutting, and so form 
the rounded tops of the cones and backs of the ridges. 
Occasionally the Karnes present forms so peculiar that it is difficult 
to realize that rain and running water alone have shaped them ; but in 
every doubtful case a careful examination of the surroundings satisfied 
me that they have been moulded by this action and no other. One 
feature in particular I found very puzzling, viz. the small lakelets 
that often occupy the deepest hollows among the Karnes, it being 
difficult to imagine any force that could hollow out lake-basins, 
operating here ; and as the action of either running water or the 
waves of the sea would necessarily leave at least one side of the 
hollow lower than the centre, one solution that presented itself 
was that the bottoms of the hollows had somehow sunk; but all the 
observations made were by no means confirmatory of the hypothesis, 
it being quite apparent that a hollow through which no stream had 
flowed must have been filled up by matter washed down from its 
banks by the rain ; indeed not long ago one of these pools was 
almost completely filled up by the action of an unusually heavy fall 
of rain in a single night. The solution of the difficulty is, however, 
simple enough ; the pools are found in oval-shaped hollows, separated 
from each other, as well as from the drained areas, by comparatively 
trifling barriers ; their oval hollows are the wider parts of the miniature 
valley of some vanished streamlet, while the barriers which block up 
their ends, and so form them into basins, are the narrower parts of 
the valley partially filled up by gravel washed down from its banks, 
the narrower parts being of course much more readily filled up than 
the wider. Other similar little difficulties as readily disappeared 
upon a closer acquaintance with them, leaving no doubt in my mind 
that the remarkable forms of the Karnes are the ordinary every-day 
work of subaerial denudation, not the product of cataclysmal waves 
of ocean, nor of glacier nor iceberg, nor of abnormal sea-currents, 
but by the unobtrusive unliasting unresting influence of the rainfall. 
In conclusion, I will briefly re-state the argument of the paper : — 
1. — The mounds, ridges, and terraces of sand, gravel, and shingle, 
