52 



into a new cliannel. Near this place a ship, supposed to be 

 Dutch, was dug out of the marsh land. The wood of which it 

 was built proved to be oak, and was blackened in the same 

 manner as the bog wood which is dug iip from time to time in 

 the peat of Eomney Marsh with large quantities of hazel nuts. 

 Sec Lyell's Principles, vol. I., page 529. In the adjacent 

 county, the haven of Pevensey ]3ay has long been choked up 

 with shingle. In other places around the coast of Britain many 

 examples coidd be given showing that where the level of the 

 land remains stationary the effect of the sea is to reduce the 

 headlands, to fill up bays, and form bars at the mouths of rivers. 

 The accumulation of small shingle and shells, covering the 

 peculiar tongue of London Clay running out in the sea at 

 Whitstable, has most probably been formed in this manner. It 

 is known as the IStreet-stones, ancient remains being marked 

 there in the ordnance map. Submerged forests do not occur on 

 the shores of Kent to the extent that they do on other coasts, 

 such wood is, however, thrown up from time to time on the 

 coast near Whitstable. Mr. John Brent, in the Geologist, vol. 

 iv., 1861, page 391, states that this wood is as black as ebony, 

 the pieces being sometimes large enough to be used for gate 

 posts. The fossil wood of the Loudon Clay cast up on the same 

 beach is sufficiently distinguished from the former by the organic 

 matter having been almost entirely replaced by pja^ites. I have 

 recently been informed by Mr. George Dowker that he has 

 known pieces of peat, bored by the Pholas, thi-own up after a 

 storm on the coast near Sandwich. These evidences of the 

 changes of level that the land must have undergone, together 

 with the effects of marine, and river action, caution us not to 

 attribute to one cause alone the present condition of the coast 

 line. It must not be overlooked that the changes of level caused 

 by subterranean movements have been the initial cause of the 

 flow of rivers but that the features of the landskip as we at 

 jiresent see them have been carved out principally by rimning 

 water. The comparative great effect that a small runnel of 

 water will produce may be seen on the coast near Keculver, 

 where several chines or ravines are now in the process of forma- 

 tion by most insignificant streams, some of them being only the 

 water draining from the open furrows left in ploughing. In 

 this manner being able to bear witness to the effects of running- 

 water at the present time, it is not difficult to understand how a 

 stream of the vokime and velocity of the Stour, has in 

 thousands of years cut its channel to lower levels, and excavated 

 its valley. This action at first would be rapid the surfaces being 

 improtected by vegetation, but would decrease until the slopes 

 assvmied the angle' of rest, of the materials of which they are 

 composed when the degradation of the land surfaces would be 



