74 
NATURAL HISTORY 
SECT. V. 
Place. 
SECT. VI. 
Some quick, 
and why. 
But the uncertainty arifing from the fhape of fands is Hill in- 
creafed by the variety of places in which we find them, and the dif- 
ferent manners in which they are difpofed in their feveral places. 
There is fcarce any vegetable foil or clay but has its portion of fand, 
hardly a gravel-pit, though in ever fo inland a country, but has fand 
in it : many ftrata of ftone have fome fand above them. Great 
part of the bottom of the fea is covered with fand ; the fhore is 
fringed with it, elpecially where the brim of the fea is fhallow, and 
■the ftrand does not dip too fall : and fome countries, not only on the 
borders of the fea, but whole region s ? for fome hundreds of miles, 
have nothing but this dreary covering w , and are therefore called the 
Delarts. We find it alfo in courles and ftrata lometimes ; but what 
is moft furprizing of all, we find thofe fands, which undoubtedly 
came from the fea, in ftrata or layers on the tops of the higheft 
hills. The queftion, well worthy of every Naturalift’s enquiry, is. 
How fands came to be fo univerfally and yet fo irregularly difpofed ? 
I ftiall confine myfelf to the moft remarkable appearances 
of fand in this county. Sand, in our vegetable foil and clay, 
is common every where, and may be reckoned among natural 
lands. In Cornwall the natural fea-fand is found in much more 
plenty in the north chanel, than in the South : from the mouth 
of Heyl, in Penwith, along to Bude-haven, Cornwall has loft a 
great deal of arable ground on the Northern coaft by means of the 
blown fea-fand, which is ftill increafing in the parifhes of St. Ives 
Lannant, Philac, Gwythien, St. Agnes, Piran Sand, Carantoc, Cuth- 
bert, Padftow, and the fand Ipreads every where but where the 
height of the cliff protects the lands from its invafion. On the South 
we have no lands over-run by the fand ; fo that either a greater quan- 
tity of it is lodged by nature in the north chanel than in the South, 
(one part of the bottom of the fea being as naturally liable to be 
more fandy as to be more rocky than another) or the river Severn 
brings down, with its muddy waters, a great quantity of earth 
and natural fand ; the earth is diflipated, or refts in flickered beds, 
the fand is driven by tide and wind upon the fhores, and thence 
upon the land. In the South chanel there is no fuch quantity, or 
at leaft fuch a continual accretion of fand ; and therefore no fuch 
defolation. 
Of Sands on the fea-lhore, fome are always quick and dangerous, 
fome are only occafionally fo. Thofe lands which are always fink- 
ing and unfafe to tread on, confift of a layer of fand fpread on the tops 
As ia Arabia, Lybia, See. 
of 
