Account of' the Erection of the Bell Rock Lighthoiisei 19 
of the progress of its various worhs till the year 1824. The 
author, who was himself the engineer and director of many 
of the works, enters upon an account of the principal under- 
taking, by giving a sketch of the natural history of the Belt 
Rock itself. It is a sunken reef of red sandstone the high- 
est part only being uncovered at ordinary ebb-tides. The 
nearest land to the Bell Rock is the town of Arbroath, from 
which it lies in a south-eastern direction, about eleven miles dis- 
tant. The dimensions of the part of the rock which becomes 
dry in spring-tides, are about 400 feet in length, and 250 feet 
in breadth, and at flood-tide the whole rock is from 10 to 12 
feet under water. It presents a very rugged surface. The 
sandstone is similar in quality, and in geognostical character, to 
that found at the Redhead in Angusshire, and on the opposite 
shores, near Dunglass in Berwickshire. The author concludes 
that the Bell Rock may have been the nucleus, now the remains, 
of a mass of land, which, at no very remote period in the history 
of the globe, may have formed a small island above the reach 
of the highest tides. Its present vegetation consists only of sea 
plants; some of them, such as Fucus lycopodioides, not of com- 
mon occurrence on our coast. It is the occasional resting-place 
of the seal and the cormorant ; and it is the chosen residence of 
numerous marine vermes. One of these (the Limnorla tere- 
brans)^ though a despicable-looking insect compared with the 
Teredo navalis^ proves equally injurious to timber placed with- 
in its reach. The author gives an account of its destructive ef- 
fects, not only on the Bell Rock Beacon, but on the sea-locks of 
diiferent canals ; and we understand that he has still (1824) a 
train of experiments going forward on the Bell Rock ; several 
specimens of fir, larch, oak, teak, and other soft and hard woods 
being fixed down on the rock, and a register being kept of the 
progress of the animal in its work of destruction upon the seve- 
ral kinds of timber. During the continuance of the works, op- 
portunities were also afforded of noticing the habits of some spe- 
cies of littoral fishes. These w-ere so regular in their visits to 
the shallower fishing-grounds, that the seamen engaged in these 
* This red sandstone belongs to the old red sandstone formation which lies 
under the oldest secondary coal formation. Edit« 
B 2 
