The sands from different localities differ greatly. The streams gather the rock particles, and sort them according to the size, which the water flowing at any given rate can carry. When the water is slowed down, it drops all the particles above the size which the new rate of speed can handle. The grains of sand from the bed of a stream are usually more or less angular. The further they are carried, the more they are knocked together and rounded; so that after being carried to the sea, and then thrown up on the beaches, they have been well rounded, especially the larger grains. As the air is less viscid than the water, sand which is transported by the wind, is even more rounded; so that desert sands show the most complete rounding, indeed are even polished; and this is true even of the smaller grains. It is the wind-blown, or desert sands, which flow so evenly in an hourglass. Between the angular residual sands and the polished desert sands, there are of course all grades. Glacial sands are angular or “sharp” almost to the degree characteristic of residual sands; and lake-shore sands are between river sands and sea sands in the degree of rounding.
Sands made of particles of lime, _calcareous sands_, are less resistant to wear than are those of quartz. In regions where the water is “soft” (free from lime), they do not last long, as they are dissolved; but in a limestone region where the water is “hard” (saturated with lime), the grains are not so quickly dissolved and may accumulate into beds of great thickness, as in Florida. Along some shores of the ocean, there occur “green sands,” which are ordinary quartz sands mixed with the dark green mineral glauconite, which is a potassium iron silicate, forming on the ocean bottom as a result of the action of decaying animal matter on iron-bearing clays and potassium-bearing silicates, like feldspar. This is particularly characteristic of some of the sands along the coast of New Jersey.
In places, especially in the beds of rivers, there occur “quicksands.” This is a deposit of fine sand, mixed with a considerable amount of clay, and saturated with water; so that it will not support the weight of a man or an animal. Much that goes under the name of quicksand is a fluid mud, covered with a thin layer of sand.