58 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



WESTERN EUROPE. 



THE whole of Northern and Western Germany is low 

 and of a sandy alluvial soil, which, without the aid of 

 cultivation and human care, might still be threatened 

 with marine invasion; and Denmark, in its oldest 

 poetical aspect, was apparently less intersected by 

 creeks and water channels than at present. High sand 

 hills are easily formed by the surf and the wind ; they 

 are no proof of antiquity, still less of durability, as 

 the fact of the sand bank, eighty feet in height, near 

 Dantzig, being broke through in 1843, and forming a 

 new mouth for the river, during an unusually high 

 flood of the inland waters. 



Some part of the east and south of England was 

 certainly connected with the opposite coast, at a period 

 preceding the change of direction which the Rhine re- 

 ceived, when turning from its ancient bed through the 

 Cevennes, a channel was formed to the north, and the 

 waters first reached the sea by the volcanic basin of 

 Neuwied. Western Germany seems then to have been 

 indented with deep bays, estuaries, and islands, the 

 salt water reaching above Wezel, on the Rhine, where 

 the heaths still abound in sea-shells in a perfect state.* 



* We have picked up, on the German side of the. Rhine, 

 near Wezel, several univalves, and a pinna, with the hinge 

 ending in a very acute point. These were found on the 

 line of the new chaussee. 



