CHAPTER V 

 RECORDS LEFT BY THE SEA 



WE have already spoken of the story which the 

 sea writes in the annals of geology. It is a 

 story with two plots. In the first place, the sea 

 is always wearing away the land. In the second place, it 

 is arranging on its own bed the materials which it takes 

 from the land, either directly or indirectly. As a sequel 

 to both stories, the materials all neatly ranged, packed, 

 and folded are revealed when the sea subsides from them, 

 or when, in process of one of those great geological 

 changes, the origin of which we have already attempted 

 to account for, the sea bottom is raised to become the 

 land of a continent. The first part of the sea's belliger- 

 ent story is written so plainly for all eyes to see that one 

 scarcely need dwell on it. Every strip of coast around 

 these islands bears witness to it. 



Off Shetland masses of rock twelve or thirteen tons in 

 weight have been cut out from the cliff seventy feet above 

 the smooth- water level. The sea's battering-rams are the 

 masses of shingle, gravel, and loose blocks of stone which 

 it carries with it ; but it has subtler methods in the corro- 

 sive action of its salts, for just as it rusts or wears away 



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