44. TOWN GEOLOGY. [i. 



and it knows neither rest nor pity, the cruel hungry 

 sea. Give it but time enough, and what would it not 

 eat up ? It would eat up, in the course of ages, all 

 the dry land of this planet, were it not baffled by 

 another counteracting force, of which I shall speak 

 hereafter. 



As you go on beyond the sea-wall, you find what 

 it is eating up. The whole low cliff is going visibly. 

 But whither is it going? To form new soil in the 

 aestuary. Now you will not wonder how old harbours 

 so often become silted up. The sea has washed the 

 land into them. But more, the sea-currents do not 

 allow the sands of the sestuary to escape freely out to 

 sea. They pile it up in shifting sand-banks about the 

 mouth of the sestuary. The prevailing sea-winds, from 

 whatever quarter, catch up the sand, and roll it up into 

 sand-hills. Those sand-hills are again eaten down by 

 the sea, and mixed with the mud of the tide-flats, and 

 so is formed a mingled soil, partly of clayey mud, 

 partly of sand ; such a soil as stretches over the greater 

 part of all our lowlands. 



Now, why should not that soil, whether in England 

 or in Scotland, have been made by the same means as 

 that of every sestuary. 



You find over great tracts of East Scotland, 

 Lancashire, Norfolk, etc., pure loose sand just beneath 

 the surface, which looks as if it was blown sand from 

 a beach. Is it not reasonable to suppose that it is ? 

 You find rising out of many lowlands, crags which look 

 exactly like old sea-cliffs eaten by the waves, from the 

 base of which the waters have gone back. Why should 

 not those crags be old sea-cliffs? Why should we not, 

 following our rule of explaining the unknown by the 



