2o8 THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE. 



that point it is fissured by disintegration and 

 richly covered with a dappled coat of 

 and yellow lichen. The slow action of the 

 r, always beating against the solid wall 

 of crystalline rock, has eaten out a thousand 

 such little bays all along this coast, each 

 bounded by long headlands, whose points 

 have been worn into fantastic pinnacles, or 

 severed from the main mass as precipitous 

 islets, the favourite resting-place of gulls and 

 cormorants. No grander coast scenery can 

 be found anywhere in the southern half of 

 Great Britain. 



Yet when I turn inland I see that all this 

 beauty has been produced by the mere inter- 

 action of the sea and the barren moors of the 

 interior. Nothing could be flatter or more 

 desolate than the country whose s 

 escarpment gives rise to these romantic coves 

 and pyramidal rocky islets. It stretches 

 away for miles in a level upland waste, only 

 redeemed from complete barrenness by the 

 low straggling bushes of the dwarf furze, 



