Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.1): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

8 CLIFFS — FISH. Dec. 1826. of soft clay, varying in colour and consistence, and disposed in strata running horizontally for many miles without interrup- tion, excepting where water-courses had worn them away. Some of the strata were very fine clay, unmixed with any other substance, whilst others were plentifully strewed with round siliceous gravel,* without any vestige of organic remains. The sea beach, from high-water mark to the base of the cliiFs, is formed by shingle, with scattered masses of indurated clay of a green colour.-f- Between the high and low tide marks there is a smooth beach of the same green clay as the masses above-men- tioned, which appears to have been hardened by the action of the surf to the consistence of stone. Generally this beach extends for about one hundred yards farther into the sea, and is succeeded by a soft green mud, over which the water gradually deepens. The outer edge of the clay forms a ledge, extending parallel with the coast, upon the whole length of which the sea breaks, and over it a boat can with difficulty pass at low water. The vory few shells we found were dead. Strewed about the beach were numbers of fish, some of which had been thrown on sliore by the last tide, and were scarcely stiff. They principally belonged to the genus Ophidium ; the largest that we saw measured four feet seven inches in length, and weighed twenty-four pounds. Many caught alongside the ship were, in truth, coarse and insipid ; yet our people, who fed heartily upon them, called them ling, and thought them palatable. The hook, however, furnished us with a very wholesome and well-flavoured species of cod (Gadrts). Attached to the first we found two parasitical animals ; one was a Cymothoa, the other a species of LerncBa, which had so • Some of the specimens of the clay strata consist, according to Dr. Fitton, who has kindly examined my collection, of a white marl not unlike certain varieties of the lower chalk ; and of a clay having many of the properties of fuller's earth. The pebbles on the beach consist of quartz, red jasper, hornstone, and flinty slate, but do not contain any stone resembling chalk flint. t Dr. Fitton considers these masses of clay to bear a resemblance to the upper green sand of England.