382 Retrospective Criticism. 



very little more than half a mile since the time specified ; a 

 vast quantity certainly, but nothing equal to what is insinuated 

 in the text. As to the last statement, it appears to me so ex- 

 traordinary, and was so heartily laughed at by all the inhabit- 

 ants of the island to whom I mentioned it, that I cannot help 

 thinking it must be a misprint, or, at all events, a slip of the 

 pen. The cliffs on the north are from 60 ft. to 80 ft. high ; 

 and rising ground (richly cultivated land, producing most ex- 

 cellent wheat, and tolerably good hops), extends to near the 

 centre of the island ; so that, even allowing fifty acres to have 

 been lost, as stated by Mr. Lyell, within the last twenty years, 

 some part of the island, I should imagine, will be yet standing 

 at the end of the next century, nearly four times the period 

 assigned by Mr. Lyell for its total annihilation. Such, at least, 

 appeared to me to be the prevalent impression of the inhabit- 

 ants, as well as of several other persons who have visited the 

 island, among them two geologists, to whom I have subse- 

 quently mentioned it. — Wm. Perceval Hunter. Sandgate, 

 July 10. 1835. [Mr. Hunter subsequently added as follows.] 

 The cliffs are certainly falling rapidly away. In some places, 

 their decay is accelerated by landsprings which eat into the 

 clay, and occasion landslips. The woman of whom I pur- 

 chased my fossil nautilus was about to leave her house, and a 

 small garden adjoining the cliff, as she no longer considered 

 it a safe place of abode. She informed me that, during her 

 younger days, some twenty or thirty years ago, at a house 

 not far from the cliff, where she was stopping for a few days, 

 the inmates were awakened early one morning, after a very 

 tempestuous night, with the disagreeable intelligence, that the 

 garden adjoining their habitation, which was about seven or 

 eight rods from the extreme edge of the cliff, containing a 

 fine crop of peas, beans, gooseberry bushes, and a few old 

 apple trees, had disappeared ; having, in the course of the 

 night, been carried off by a landslip, and hurled down into 

 the stormy sea below. The house itself was tottering to its 

 foundation ; and the occupiers quitted it in trembling preci- 

 pitation. Such incidents are far from rare on the north-east 

 of these crumbling cliffs. — Sandgate, July 28. 1835. 



Art. XV. Retrospective Criticism. 



Dr. Turton, in his " Origines Zoologicce" in this Magazine 

 (VII. 407.), observes, that " the descent of the Holy Ghost 

 upon the Redeemer, at his Baptism, was in the form of a Dove." 

 (Matt. iii. 16.) — This, I am aware, is a very usual mode 



