ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA. 583 
their maintenance is an object of solicitude with the Govern- 
ments and people of the shores they defend.* 
The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish, Netherlandish, 
and French coasts depends so much on local geological structure, 
on the force and direction of tidal and other marine currents, 
on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the contingencies 
of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no 
general rate can be assigned to it. 
At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, 
the coast was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, 
at the rate of more than eighteen feet a year. The advance of 
the sea appears to haye been something less rapid for a century 
before; but from 1840 to 1857, it gained upon the land no less 
than thirty feet a year. At other points of the shore of 
Jutland the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching generally 
upon the whole line of the coast. 
The Liimfijord. 
The irruption of the sea into the fresh-water lagoon of 
Liimfjord in Jutland, in 1825—one of the most remarkable 
encroachments of the ocean in modern times—is expressly as- 
cribed to “mismanagement of the dunes” on the narrow neck 
of land which separated the fjord from the North Sea. At 
earlier periods the sea had swept across the isthmus, and even 
burst through it, but the channel had been filled up again, 
* “We must, therefore, not be surprised to see the people here deal as 
gingerly with their dunes as if treading among eggs. He who is lucky enough 
to own a molehill of dune pets it affectionately, and spends his substance in 
eherishing and fattening it. That fair, fertile, rich province, the peninsula of 
Hiderstiidt in the south of Friesland, has, on the point towards the -ea, only a 
tiny row of dunes, some six miles long or so ; but the people talk of their fringe 
of sand hills, as if it were a border set with pearls. They look upon it as their 
best defence against Neptune. They have connected it with their system of 
dikes, and for years have kept sentries posted to protect it against wanton in- . 
jury."—J. G. Konu, Die Lnseln u. Marschen Schleswig-Holsteins, ii., p. 115. 
+ ANDRESEN, Om Khitformationen, pp. 68-72. 
