ENCROACHMENTS OF THE SEA. 



237 



feet in thickness, was removed from its bed fifty years ago, to a 

 distance of thirty feet, and has since been twice turned over. 



The long continued and violent action of the surf, finally frets 

 away the softer parts of islands, and nothing remains but fanci- 

 ful clusters of rocks, and mere shreds and patches of masses once 

 continents. We give below a view of the cluster of rocks to the 

 south of Hillswick Ness, one of the Hebrides, from a sketch by 



Dr. Hibbert. These fantastic shaped rocks, which are all that re- 

 main of what was once an island covered with vegetation, are 

 striking monuments of that incessant change which, continually, 

 though silently and almost unnoticed, is going on, but whose 

 final effects are of the most magnificent character. Examples of 

 such rocks as are figured above, are found in many places along 

 the coast of the United States, where it is exposed to the action 

 of the storms of the Atlantic. We may be able to form some 

 idea of the degrading power of the ocean from the following 

 statement, which is given on the authority of Lieut. Mather, ge- 

 ologist to the first district of the state of New York. 



" Vast masses of the cliffs of loam, sand, gravel, and loose 

 rocks, of which Long Island is composed, are undermined and 

 washed away by every storm. The water on the ocean coast, to 

 some distance from the shore, is almost always found to have 



