562 ENCEOACHMENTS OF THE SEA. 



the brooks would fill the lagoon again with fresh water ; fresh 

 water fish and shell-fish would reappear, and thus we should have 

 a repeated alternation of organic inhabitants of the sea and of the 

 waters of the land. 



" These events have been accompanied with but a comparatively 

 insignificant change of land surface, whUe the formations in the 

 bed of this inland sea have been totally revolutionized in charac- 

 ter." * 



Coasts of Sehleswig-Holstem, Holland a/nd France. 



On the islands on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein, the advance 

 of the sea has been more unequivocal and more rapid. Near the 

 beginning of the last century, the dunes which had protected the 

 western coast of the island of Sylt began to roll to the east, and 

 the sea followed closely as they retired. In 1Y5Y, the church of 

 Rantum, a village upon that island, was obliged to be taken down 

 in consequence of the advance of the sand-hills ; in 1Y91, these 

 hills had passed beyond its site, the waves had swallowed up its 

 foundations, and the sea gained so rapidly, that, fifty years later; 

 the spot where they lay was seven hundred feet from the shore.f 



The most prominent geological landmark on the coast of Hol- 

 land is the Huis te Britten, Arx Brita/nnica^ a fortress built by 

 the Romans, in the time of Caligula, on the mainland near the 

 mouth of the Rhine. At the close of the seventeenth century, 

 the sea had advanced sixteen hundred paces beyond it. The 

 older Dutch annalists record, with much parade of numerical ac- 

 curacy, frequent encroachments of the sea upon many parts of 

 the Netherlandish coast. But though the general fact of an ad- 

 vance of the ocean upon the land is established beyond dispute,, 

 the precision of the measurements which have been given is open 

 to question. Staring, however, who thinks the erosion of the 

 coast much exaggerated by popular geographers, admits a loss of 

 more than a milli on and a half acres, chiefly worthless morass ; :j: 

 and it is certain that but for the resistance of man, but for his 



* FoRCHHAMMER, Oeognostische Studien am Meerea-JJf&r, Lbokhabd und 

 Brojtn, Jahrhuch, 1841, pp. 11, 13. 

 f Andresen, Om Klitformationen, pp. 68, 73. 

 X VoormaaU en Thans, pp. 126, 170. 



