396 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



relics, and thrown up a skull upon the beach. In the foreground is seen a broken tomb- 

 stone, erected, as its legend tells, to ' perpetuate the memory' of one whose name is 

 obliterated, as is that of the county for which he was * Gustos Rotulorum.' A cormorant 

 is perched on the monument, defiling it, as if to remind some moraliser like Hamlet of the 

 * base uses ' to which things sacred may be turned. Had this excellent artist desired to 

 satirise certain popular theories of geology, he might have inscribed the stone to the 

 memory of some philosopher who taught 'the permanency of existing continents' 'the 

 era of repose ' ' the impotence of modern causes.' " The most eastern point of Essex 

 the Naze was formerly extended much further to the east, as the ruins of buildings 

 have been found at considerable distances from land. The cliffs, composed of London 

 clay capped with crag yielding fossils, have been gradually worn away, probably from a 

 shoal called West Rock, which is now five miles from the shore. Upon the coast -line of 

 Kent large inroads have been made, and are proceeding with undiminished rapidity. 

 About the North Foreland the promontory Acantium, 'AKO.VTIOV rkpov of Ptolemy the 

 chalk wastes, upon an average, at the rate of two feet per annum ; and at Reculver, to 

 the west of the Isle of Thanet, the sea has made extensive depredations. The ancient 

 church here, now dismantled a well-known sea-mark in the centre of a Roman station 

 is on the verge of the cliff; but in the middle of the last century there was some con- 

 siderable space intervening between the porthern boundary of the churchyard and the 

 shore. In the time of Henry VIII. the church was nearly a mile inland ; and the Roman 

 town of Regulbium is supposed to have occupied a site to the north of the station now 

 undermined and washed away. Another century can scarcely elapse without witnessing 

 the entire demolition of the place. 



These instances are sufficiently illustrative of the fact that the physical outline of our 

 coast has suffered largely by depredation from the sea, as the effect both of its occasional 

 violent action in storms, and the milder but incessant play of its waters ; and if we pass 

 to other coasts exposed to the influence of high tides and strong currents, precisely 

 similar devastations occur. It has been found, by observations made between 1804 and 

 1820, that, in the intervening sixteen years, th average advance of the ocean on the 

 north side of Delaware Bay, in the United States, amounted to above nine feet 

 per annum, while in three years, towards the close of the last century, no less than 

 a quarter of a mile of land was carried away from Sullivan's Island, near the entrance 

 of the harbour of Charlestown. But if at various points the influence of the sea 

 diminishes the mass of land by encroachment upon its coast, there are other points 

 where compensation is made by the growth of the land, through the silting up of the 

 sand of the ocean, or the deposition of the sediment of rivers ; and the case is common for 

 the coast line to be changing by aggression and addition in the same neighbourhood. 

 Within the times of history new land has been formed in the estuary of the Humber, 

 along the Lincolnshire shore, that of Norfolk, Kent, and Sussex, where, in the latter 

 county, the rich level of Romney Marsh has been largely augmented. Dover is situated 

 at the opening of a deep valley, formed by a depression in the chalk, which runs into 

 the interior for several miles, and is the basin of a small stream. It would appear from 

 the account of Caesar's first advance to the coast, that the sea then occupied the present 

 site of the town, and advanced to some distance up the valley, from which it has 

 subsequently been expelled by the gradual accumulation of sand and shingle washed up 

 by the tide. In digging for the foundation of houses corroborative evidence of this 

 fact appears in the character of the soil, while at the present, the sea threatens to 

 block up the existing harbour by the amount of debris it heaps together at its mouth. 

 A similar but more extensive change has taken place at Norwich, which, in the time 

 of the Saxons, was situated ' on the banks of an arm of the sea, an estuary which has 



