338 APPENDIX. 



black boggy soil nourishing a brown and grey lichen, moss, 

 several species of ericae, graminiae and other herbaceous plants, 

 and is intersected with a few valleys containing small streams, 

 and having their more protected declivities adorned with 

 shrubs of willow and dwarf betula (hetula incana). 



A continual waste of the cliff is produced at the upper part 

 by its falling down in considerable lumps to the bottom, where 

 the debris remains for a longer or shorter time, and covers the 

 front to a greater or less height ; in some places, almost to the 

 very top. Large masses are sometimes seen rent off and stand- 

 ino- out from the body of the cliff ready to have their last slight 

 hold washed away by the next shower, or by a little more 

 thawing and separation of the frozen earth that serves them 

 for attachment. The lumps of soil that fall are still covered 

 with the herbaceous and shrubby verdure that grew upon 

 them. The perpendicular front of the cliff of frozen mud and 

 sand is every summer gradually decreasing by the melting of 

 the ice between its particles into water, which trickles down 

 and carries with it loose particles of earth. In some por- 

 tions of the cliff the earthy surface is protected with ice, 

 partly the effect of snow driven into the hollows and fissures, 

 and partly from the congelation of water, which may have col- 

 lected in chinks or cavities : these masses of ice dissolve in 

 summer, and the water running from them carries with it any 

 earth that lies in its way, and mixes itself with, and moves for- 

 ward, the mass of debris below. By this gradual thawing and 

 falling of the cliff, the black boggy soil at the surface becomes 

 undermined, and assumes the projecting and overhanging ap- 

 pearance which is so remarkable. At the base of the greater 

 part of the cliflP the debris is washed by the sea at full tide, 

 and being gradually carried away by the retiring waters, is 

 spread out into an extensive shoal along the coast. It was in 

 this shoal, where it is left dry by the ebbing tide, to the dis- 

 tance of fifty or a hundred yards from the cliff, that the greater 

 number of the fossil bones and teeth were discovered, many of 

 them so concealed as only to leave a small end or knob stick- 

 ing up ; they were dispersed very irregularly. Remains of the 

 musk-oak were found on this shoal, along with those of ele- 

 phants. 



