388 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



zance, in which the striking insulated rock of St. Michael's Mount occurs, to have once 

 been a part of the mainland of Cornwall, submerged by a violent inroad of the ocean. 

 The surface of the rock is every where covered by long hoary moss, which gives it a 

 venerable ruin-like appearance, and perhaps originated the name it is said to have borne 

 in the time of the Druids the " Hore Rock in the Wood." There is evidence, which 

 deserves attention, that the wide expanse of sea surrounding the rock at high water was, 

 in ancient times, the site of a wood ; and the Mount itself is believed to have been distant 

 five or six miles from the former shore. At low water, many large trees have been dug 

 up from the surrounding sands, which the miners regard as monuments of the vegetation 

 of the antediluvian world. But the druidical name indicates that these trees were flou 

 rishing here at a comparatively recent period : and the freshness and preservation of some 

 of them support the conclusion ; for, besides the roots and trunks of large forest-trees, 

 there are many small bushes with leaves and nuts upon their branches, which appear to 

 have been growing where they are found. It has been inferred, from the circumstance 

 of ripe nuts and leaves remaining together, that a sudden irruption of the sea must have 

 taken place in autumn, which submerged this woodland district, and has since buried the 

 vegetation beneath a bed of sand from one to two feet in thickness. In the time of 

 Edward the Confessor, the rock of St. Michael's Mount was the site of a monastery, 

 described as being near the sea ; and as the storm of 1099, mentioned in the Saxon 

 Chronicles, occurred in the autumn, the submersion of the district has been referred to 

 that inundation. A series of more authentic notices of extensive inroads of the sea 

 when agitated by storms upon the coast of Sussex, occurs in Dr. Mantell's account of 

 the geology of that county. Within a period of no more than eighty years, twenty 

 of these invasions are mentioned, in which tracts of land of from twenty to four 

 hundred acres in extent have been swept away at once, the value of the tithes being 

 mentioned by Nicholas in his Taxatio Ecclesiastica. Brighton, when a mere fishing 

 village, in the reign of Elizabeth, stood upon a site where the sea now rolls, and the chain- 

 pier stands. 



The more important of these sudden and terrible actions of the sea, since the eighth 

 century, are mentioned in chronological series in the following table, taken from the 

 work of M. Hoff, with some additions from other sources. 



Years. 



800. The sea carries off a large quantity of the soil of Heligoland, islands in 

 the German Ocean, off the mouth of the Elbe, previously of considerable 

 extent, but subsequently much reduced. 



800 900. Tempests change the coasts of Brittany : valleys and villages are 



swallowed up. The Bretons have a tradition, which has descended 



from the fabulous ages, of the destruction of the south-western part 



of Brittany. 



800 950. Violent storms agitate the lagunes of Venice. The isles of Ammiano and 



Costanziaco disappear. 



1044 1309. Terrible irruptions of the Baltic on the coasts of Pomerania, which com 

 mit great ravages, and give rise to the popular rumour of the disappear 

 ance of the fabulous city of Vineta. 



1106. Old Malamocca, a considerable town near Venice, engulfed by the sea. 

 1218. A great inundation formed, near the mouth of the Weser, the gulf of 

 Jadhe, so named from the small river which watered the fertile country 

 destroyed by this catastrophe. 

 1219, 1220. Terrible storms form the island of Wieringen. This lies to the south of 



