INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION. 639 
Incidental Effects of Human Action. 
I have more than once alluded to the collateral and unsought 
consequences of human action as being often more momentous 
than the direct and desired results. There are cases where 
such incidental, or, in popular speech, accidental, consequen- 
ces, though of minor importance in themselves, serve to illus- 
trate natural processes; others, where, by the magnitude and 
character of the material traces they leave behind them, they 
prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages of 
social life, must have occupied particular districts for a longer 
period than has been supposed by popular chronology. “On 
the coast of Jutland,’ says Forchhammer, “wherever a bolt 
from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited in 
the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and form 
a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable formation 
of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing the 
sea-wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which sel- 
dom exceeded a foot in thickness, rested upon common beach 
sand, and was found at various depths, less near the shore, 
ereater at some distance from it. It was composed of pebbles 
and sand, and contained a great quantity of pins, and some 
coins of the reign of Christian IV., between the beginning and 
the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and there, a 
coating of metallic copper had been deposited by galvanic 
action, and the presence of completely oxydized metallic iron 
was often detected. Investigation made it in the highest 
degree probable that this formation owed its origin to the street 
sweepings of the town, which had been thrown upon the beach, 
and carried off and distributed by the waves over the bottom 
of the harbor.”* ‘These and other familiar observations of the 
like sort show that a sandstone reef, of no inconsiderable mag- 
nitude, might originate from the stranding of a ship with a 
* Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer, LEONHARD und BRONN, Jahrbuch, 
1841, pp. 25, 26. 
