The Æolian Formation on the Lancashire Coast

Abstract

IN the absence of large works on the subject, has your recent Waterloo correspondent seen the Survey memoir of the district around Southport in which the phenomena of wind driftage are treated in a brief yet quantitative manner? The efficient way in which pebbles and shells—as of Mactra stultorum (with which the shore is so plentifully covered)—especially when the convex side of a valve is presented vertically towards the direction of the storm winds, protect a small area to leeward, forming a miniature crag-and-iail arrangement, would seem to suggest that a solid screen offering an unbroken surface to the action of the wind, and at some distance from the region threatened, would be far more useful than the present expedients of growing marram grass, &c., to consolidate the dunes, or of planting lines of bare stakes. Practical men would easily devise a cheaply constructed barrier of old ship-timber faced with ling or other accessible material, or perhaps use the sand-hills themselves when armoured with tabular blocks of stone made on the spot by some such process as employed in the construction of the sea-walls of the Suez Canal. Land sold for building plots on exposed points ought surely to have some adequate defence against the devouring sand.