Earth Pillars

Abstract

A LETTER in your issue for September 26 (p. 569) refers to miniature earth pillars seen in the Tyrol. But there is no need to travel out of the country to obtain these mimic representations, at any rate on a moderate scale. Twice I have found them, formed by the drops from railway bridges, upon bare clays; and once in a half-finished building, in a sand-heap containing numerous pebbles. Evidently the heavy drops and the protection from driving rain favoured the result. One of the bridges, between Shepton Mallett and Wells, Som., covered Lias clays, protected by cinders, &c. The other instance, the bridge on the new North Approach just outside York Station, is the more interesting in its mimicry of the original Botzen earth pillars, since small boulders and pebbles in the glacial clays form the caps and shoulders in the Lilliputian columns.