THE BUILDING OF THE EARTH 



Holland. The North Sea was once dry land. But the 

 sea encroached on it from the north, and the Atlantic 

 Ocean battered a way through on the south, till the 

 English Channel was bored through into the shallow 

 waters of the newly-formed North Sea, and the lands 

 that had once been part of Europe became these " sceptred 

 isles set in the silver sea."" 



This is not all the story. What the sea takes away it 

 gives again. Sir Thomas Holdich is our authority for 

 saying that on some parts of the Pacific coast of America 

 you may at some points see on the one hand dry land 

 which by the shells found on it shows that the sea once 

 flowed over it ; while side by side with this raised land 

 you may sail a boat over forests now sunk beneath the 

 sea. The loss of bits and corners of England is serious 

 so serious that a Royal Commission on Sea Erosion, as 

 the process is called, was appointed to inquire into the 

 extent of the loss and the means by which it might be 

 remedied. But in some parts of our coast the land is not 

 losing, but gaining. If the sea takes away sand and 

 gravel, chalk and shale and clay from the cliffs, these 

 materials are not lost. Something is done with them. 

 They must at some points, where the tides and currents 

 of the sea deposit them, make the sea more shallow. 

 Perhaps the sea lays them down as beds or sand-banks. 

 Perhaps it carries them round the coast to some other 

 point and there drops them. Can you not see that in this 

 way the sea which at one point is dragging down the coast 

 may at other points be building it up, or may be even con- 

 structing breakwaters made out of these stolen materials ? 



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