52 
SEA SAND. 
Not only does sand retain water, but water will even rise up 
through sand against the force of gravity. An upright tube 
was filled with white sand from Huttons Ambo, into which a 
very little blue black dye had been mixed. The lower end of 
the tube was placed upright in a basin of water, and the water 
gradually rose dissolving the dye and blackening the sand. 
The distance which the water was able to rise—n inches— 
suggests that this sand behaves as a labyrinth of passages a 
little over inch across; the height to which the water 
rises being an indirect means of measuring the breadth of the 
passages. 
To find whether sand really has been formed by the wear 
and tear of the coast-line, we must examine the material of 
the grains. A good example is the flint sand at Thornwick 
Bay, apparently derived from the bands of flint which occur in 
the chalk cliffs, and which are so well seen when visiting the 
Flamboro’ caves by boat. But be it noted that whilst the 
cliffs are almost all chalk with only a few narrow bands of 
flint, the sand is almost all flint with only a few white chalk 
pebbles. The softer chalk has worn away far faster than the 
hard flint. In Cornelian Bay, near Scarboro’, are certain 
patches of red purple sand close beside a red band in the 
rocks, and in Scarboro' South Bay the sand, yellowish on the 
whole, corresponds to the yellow colour of the oolite rocks. 
So that we may take it as at least partly true that sand has 
come from the cliffs near at hand. But there are also dark 
particles in the Scarboro’ sand which do not suggest any of 
the adjacent rocks, and if these dark particles are not of local 
origin, we may have to re-open our inquiry into the yellow 
ones. 
On the supposition that sand is in continual process of being 
made, and of wearing away, then the smaller grains might say 
to the larger—“ I was what you are, and what I am you shall 
be ” ; but with the proviso that the softer material will be the 
sooner reduced to dust and mud and carried out to sea, so that 
the residue left on the shore will represent chiefly the harder 
particles. 
Let us explore the history of the sand by considering the 
gravel, for example that of Cornelian Bay which has long 
