VI. 
The Underground Waste of the Land. 
‘EOGRAPHERS and geologists are alike interested in the origin 
of the physical features of the land; but their sympathies 
become united only when we treat of the actual processes of 
sculpture. To the geologist the evolution of scenery is an exceedingly 
complex subject, for many of the features marked out in ancient 
epochs have been buried up by subsequent sediments and afterwards 
revealed by denudation. In the long and varied history of the sub- 
ject the geographer is apt to manifest impatience, for he cares little 
about the age of the rocks, so long as he understands their relation 
to the form of the ground, and the influences that have contributed to 
produce the present shape of hill and dale, lake and river. 
In this country the waste along our coasts, especially along the 
eastern and southern shores, is manifest; but when we study the 
inland features and find evidence of so many ancient earthworks, 
it would seem that the surface of the land has been but little modified 
during the past four or five thousand years. 
The power of rain and rivers in wearing away the surface of the 
land is scarcely realised until statistics are presented to us of the 
amount of solid matter annually carried to sea by our rivers. 
From some areas in England and Wales as much as 150 (or even 200) 
tons per square mile may be removed each year, but the result is 
imperceptible, for it means a lowering of the general level of the land 
of about one-tenth of an inch ina century. 
More conspicuous are the local evidences of destruction that 
may be seen in the occasional landslip and in the screes of fragmentary 
rock at the foot of crag and mountain. The material is dislodged by 
the mechanical action of frost and rain, and in some situations, 
as along the Pass of Brander, below Loch Awe, it is carried away by 
torrential streams, and the rounded fragments go to form beds of 
gravel. Again, after heavy rains, the turbid streams in the lowlands 
plainly indicate the kind of denudation that is taking place. 
The loss of material that is carried away in solution is rarely 
made manifest, except in the case of caverns, and by sinkings of the 
ground in limestone-areas ; or by the artificial removal of brine from 
the salt regions of Cheshire, whereby great subsidences have been 
caused. Even the Bath hot-springs, which do not contain a very 
