BEACH

In Geography, a shelving tract of sand or shingle washed by the sea or a freshwater lake, and interposed between the water and the land on which vi grows. The beach of the ocean is, generally speaking, little more than the space between low and high water mark; the beach of a lake, that between the water marks of the highest and lowest ordinary level of the lake. An inland sea without tide, such as the Mediterranean, lias generally little beach, except on flat coasts, where the waters are apt to rise and fall considerably, according in the prevailing winds, liaised beaches exhibit a curious phenomenon in geology: they are tracts of shingle and gravel, indurated for the most part into the consistency of pub ding stone or breccia, found on the sides of shelving ground at a level above that of some neighbouring lake or sea, in such a position as to leave no doubt that they had in ancient times been washed by its waters. They are found extending along large tracts in the vicinity of the great American lakes. [s. 152]