466 THE CHEMISTRY OF CREATION. 



the Tees to the Humber, is being gradually 

 destroyed by the action of the sea. " In the 

 old maps of Yorkshire," observes Sir C. Lyell, 

 '' we find spots, now sand-banks in the sea, 

 marked as the ancient sites of the towns and 

 villages of Auburn, Hartburn, and Hyde." 

 " Of Hyde," says Pennant, " only the tradition 

 is left, and near the village of Hornsea, a street 

 called Hornsea Beck has long since been swal- 

 lowed." In one place on the coast of Nor- 

 folk, there was at one point in the harbour, in 

 1829, a depth of twenty feet, sufficient to float 

 a frigate, where only forty-eight years before 

 there stood a cliff forty feet high with houses 

 upon it ! 



When we come to inquire into the chemistry 

 concerned in this process of destruction, it 

 will be manifest that it must greatly vary 

 with the nature and character of the sea-coast. 

 Yet the grand chemical operations of nature 

 are all carried on in a remarkably simple man- 

 ner, and we find that water, carbonic acid, 

 and atmospheric oxygen, are, as in the waste 

 carried on inland, the chief agents of destruc- 

 tion. The hard granitic rocks of the northern 

 Isles cannot withstand the influence of carbonic 

 acid acting upon them in a state of solution, 

 and constantly applied to their surface by the 

 dashing upwards of the waves. Wherever the 



