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V. Marine Denudation illustrated by the Brimham Rocks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

D. Mackintosh
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Extract

The claims of the sea as a denuding agent have been much disputed of late years; the meteoric and fluviatile theories of denudation have been revived; and the glacial theory has been extended, so as to encroach on what was once generally admitted to be the legitimate province of the sea. But, as a forgetfulness of, as well as too much reliance on, the power of the sea to modify, may become a fertile source of hasty and false generalization, it is well that the importance of waves, tides, and currents, as denuding causes, should be re-asserted, and attention directed afresh to the more striking monuments they have left behind them in regions removed from their present theatre of action. These monuments present an unmistakeable resemblance to the cliffs, buttresses, walled inlets, pillars, needles, &c., now in course of being formed by the sea; and in explaining them, the old principle of sound theorization —similar effects are referable to similar causes —is not to be set aside by overstraining the capabilities of any theory which will merely account for the phenomena.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 2 , Issue 10 , April 1865 , pp. 154 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1865

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References

* Capt. Spratt, R.N., has described and figured a remarkable group of pillars of Nummulitic Limestone at Varna, associated with cromlech-like masses, and with vertical rents gradually widening in a neighbouring cliff-like bank, showing the passage-conditions between the fissured rock and isolated columns. Similar peaks and pillars stand beneath the sea on the floor of Varna Bay. Though inclined to believe in these columnar rocks having been shaped by atmospheric action, Capt. Sprátt leaves the question open. See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xiii., p. 74, &c. The difference of limestone and sandstone must be borne in mind, when contrasting these shaped rock-masses of Varna with those of Brimham.Google Scholar

† In several parts of the Lake District (Great Langdale, for instance), and I have no doubt elsewhere, rocks smoothed and drounded by ancient glaciers have not been visibly oughened by atmospheric agency, though different parts of these rocks are of unequal softness, and though they rise up in exposed situations. In discrediting the wonderful extent to which certain rocka may resist the atmosphere, geologists do not take their mossy covering sufficiently into account.