2 8 SEA AND LAXD 



much difficulty in breaking down the strata ; at every stroke 

 they give way along the face of the cliff, and the frail over- 

 hanging mass quickly drops down to the shore. There are 

 of course no sea-caverns, no penetrating chasms, or other 

 irref'ularitics which indicate the slow and difficult siege of the 

 sea against the stony walls of the hard-rock shores. Such 

 coast-lines are usually straight and present little that is pictur- 

 esque, except when, as at Gay Head, Mass., and at Alum Bay, 

 in the Isle of Wight, tlie soft strata are of varied colors and 

 perhaps tilted and folded in complicated ways ; in such cases 

 the cliffs ma)- have a marvellous beauty of hue to redeem 

 their lack of variety in contour. 



The only difficulty the waves have in making a rapid con- 

 quest of these soft cliffs arises from the task of clearing the 

 waste accumulation of debris which comes to them from the 

 yielding rock, k^xccpt where the beds contain large numbers 

 of great bowlders, as is often the case with glacial deposits, 

 there is no such resistance; as arises from the need of grinding 

 up the rock into bits which the currents can carry away, for 

 it comes to the waves in a comminuted form. The burthen 

 of this work of destruction falls upon the currents, and the 

 speed with which the cliff is worn away depends upon their 

 abilit)' to remove the fallen material from the point where the 

 waves have delivered it to the sea. It is rare indeed that 

 these currents can in their work keep pace with that of the 

 waves : in large measure this debris remains just to the sea- 

 ward of the shore-line, and is only slowly removed to a short 

 distance, to the neighboring beaches or to the deeper parts 

 of the water: in this position next the shore, it so far shallows 

 the water that all the greater waves break at a distance from 

 the face of the cliff, and only the lighter splash waves attain 



