A CORNER OF KENT. 227 



and with a mere soup$on of zoology or botany, aided, 

 say, by a microscope, you may spend hours of keenest 

 delight during your holiday-time, and rescue other 

 souls dying of ennui from the horrors of having 

 " nothing to do/' which, I take it, are much worse than 

 those attaching to the condition of having " nothing to 

 wear." 



This Kentish coast well illustrates the interest which 

 may be made to attach to a simple study in sea- action. 

 The Isle of Sheppey, to begin with, measures about 

 six miles in length by four miles in breadth. Its 

 substance consists of London clay, which is practically 

 about the most feeble of materials, in so far as resist- 

 ance to the sea is concerned. Now, Sir Charles Lyell 

 records that, between 1810 and 1830, no fewer than 

 fifty acres of the Isle of Sheppey were swallowed up 

 by the sea. The cliffs on the north, he tells us, which 

 are from 100 to 200 feet high, decay rapidly under 

 the influence of " the weather," under which term, of 

 course, we must include the sea itself. 



In 1780 the church of Minster was said to have 

 been situated in the middle of Sheppey : it is now 

 near the coast, so that, as far as the whole isle is 

 concerned, it would not be a difficult matter, as Lyell 

 says, to calculate the period when its annihilation 

 would be accomplished. It is true, man intervenes 

 in such cases with his breakwaters and sea-walls, and 

 thus arrests the otherwise triumphant assault of the 

 sea on the land ; but the record of the ocean's vic- 

 tories and spoils is nevertheless a huge one, and the 

 geological thought that all the matter stolen from the 

 land will simply form the rocks of the future, possesses, 

 I am afraid, but a poor meed of consolation for land- 

 owners to-day. East of Sheppey we come, of course, to 



