392 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



assaults of the ocean upon it, in connection with the action of springs, which filter 

 through, displace the softer strata, and leave the more solid formations destitute of sup- 

 port. The Undercliff in the Isle of Wight, a series of terraces, some of which have heen 

 long settled, Avhile others are more recent and ruinous, is an example of these landslips. 

 They occur upon a grand scale along the coast of the Crimea, where extensive tracts of 

 the shore are often dislodged, sinking down as they slide forwards, sometimes bearing 

 with them the trees, and the houses of the natives, uninjured. A slip of this kind took 

 place at Folkstone, on the coast of Kent, about the year 1716, when a solid mass of chalk 

 resting on clay moved gradually towards the sea, "just as a ship is launched on tallowed 

 planks;" and part of the promontory of Beachy Head, three hundred feet in length, in a 

 similar manner gave way in the year 1813. Hutchins records a memorable slide in his 

 History of Dorsetshire, which happened on that shore in 1792 : " Early in the morning 

 the road was observed to crack. This continued increasing, and before two o'clock the 

 ground had sunk several feet, and was in one continual motion, but attended with no 

 other noise than what was occasioned by the separation of the roots and brambles, and 

 now and then a falling rock. At night it seemed to stop a little, but soon moved again, 

 and before morning the ground, from the top of the cliff to the water-side, had sunk in 

 some places fifty feet perpendicular. The extent of ground that moved was about a mile 

 and a quarter from north to south, and six hundred yards from east to west." 



Electricity > the action of ordinary atmospheric changes the incessant percolation of 

 springs the violent, and more gentle yet constant dash of the waves these are causes 

 which operate to dislodge the masses from a rocky coast which are found lying in chaotic 

 confusion upon many a beach, doomed finally to decay from the still continued influence 

 of some of the agencies that have effected their disruption, but undergoing great annual 

 changes in their disposition when situated upon an exposed shore. In the Shetland Isles, 

 upon which the Atlantic bears with unchecked power, enormous blocks are every winter 

 shifted by the might of its waves, and sometimes transported to a considerable distance, 

 even up the slope of an acclivity. " The Isle of Stenness," says Dr. Hibbert, " pre- 

 sents a scene of unequalled desolation. In stormy^w inters, huge blocks are overturned, 

 or are removed from their native beds, and hurried up a steep acclivity to a distance 

 almost incredible. In the winter of 1802, a tabular-shaped mass, eight feet two inches by 

 seven feet, and five feet one inch thick, was dislodged from its bed, and removed to a 

 distance of from eighty to ninety feet. I measured the recent bed from which a block 

 had been carried away the preceding winter (1818), and found it to be seventeen feet and 

 a half by seven feet, and the depth two feet eight inches. The removed mass had been 

 borne to a distance of thirty feet, when it was shivered into thirteen or more lesser frag- 

 ments, some of which were carried still farther from thirty to one hundred and twenty 

 feet. A block, nine feet two inches by six feet and a half, and four feet thick, was hurried 

 up the acclivity to a distance of one hundred and fifty feet," Speaking of the island of 

 Roeness, he states : " A mass of rock, the average dimensions of which may perhaps be 

 rated at twelve or thirteen feet square, and four and a half or five in thickness, was first 

 moved from its bed, about fifty years ago, to a distance of thirty feet, and has since been 

 twice tilrned over. But the most sublime scene is where a mural pile of porphyry, 

 escaping the process of disintegration that is devastating the coast, appears to have been 

 left as a sort of rampart against the inroads of the ocean ; the Atlantic, when provoked 

 by wintry gales, batters against it with all the force of real artillery, the waves having, 

 in their repeated assaults, forced themselves an entrance. This breach, named the Grind 

 of the Navir, is widened every winter by the overwhelming surge that, finding a passage 

 through it, separates large stones from its sides, and forces them to a distance of no less 

 than one hundred and eighty feet. In two or three spots, the fragments which have been 



