240 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



Sir Charles Lyell saw the place, only a small garden 

 was left between the building and the sea. We need 

 hardly add that all vestiges of the inn have long since 

 been swept away. Lyell also relates that, in 1829, 

 there was a depth of water sufficient to float a frigate 

 at a point where, less than half a century before, there 

 stood a cliff fifty feet high with houses upon it. 



"We have selected these portions of the coast of 

 Great Britian, not because the destruction of our 

 shores is greater here than elsewhere, but as serving to 

 illustrate processes of waste and demolition which are 

 going on around all the shores, not merely of Great 

 Britain, but of every country on the face of the earth. 

 Here and there, as we have said, there are instances in 

 which a contrary process seems to be in action. Low- 

 lying banks and shoals are formed sometimes along 

 stretches of coast extending for a considerable distance. 

 But when we consider these formations closely, we find 

 that they rather afford evidence of the energy of the 

 destructive forces to which the land is subject than 

 promise to make up for the land which has been swept 

 away. In the first place, every part of these banks 

 consists of the debris of other coasts. ISTow, we cannot 

 doubt that of earth which is washed away from our 

 shores, by far the larger part finds its way to the bot- 

 tom of the deep seas ; a small proportion only can be 

 brought (by some peculiarity in the distribution of 

 ocean-currents, or in the progress of the tidal wave) to 



