272 ProceediTigs of the Royal Physical Society. 



In 1825 the sea dug out all the coffins, and scattered the 

 bones of the dead. The inhabitants thereupon engaged an 

 old man to collect them, paying him for his trouble by pre- 

 senting him with the wood of the old coffins. In Grode 

 during a storm the coffins floated in at the windows of the 

 houses. 



That many of these islands will eventually disappear can 

 be hardly doubtful. Indeed, in Friesian tradition, there are 

 many weird tales of sailors returning to their homes after 

 long voyages, and failing to find the Hallige and the werft 

 which they had left. 



Heligoland is, perhaps, the most remarkable, and certainly 

 the best known of the Friesian Islands. Every one who has 

 sailed up the Elbe must have noticed it as the first land seen 

 after leaving Scotland. Its red keuper cliffs are very marked, 

 and in frowning cliffs or rock Heligoland differs from most of 

 the other islands, which are, from the greater part, made up of 

 sand. Heligoland is really two islands — the Eock Island and 

 the Sand one. The Eock Island is the one on which the town 

 is built. It is 5880 feet in its greatest length, its circumfer- 

 ence is 1P),500 feet, its average height 198 feet, while the 

 highest point is 216, and the greatest breadth 1845 feet, the 

 island sloping from west to east. The Sand Island is about 

 200 feet above the sea at its highest point, but the drifting 

 sand and the constant inroads of the sea make this height 

 rather variable. This "dune" or Sand Island is about a 

 quarter of a mile east of the rock or main island. It is only 

 about half a mile in length, and a little less in breadth. Now, 

 no subject is a more stock one in all books on geology and 

 physical geography than the destruction of Heligoland. We 

 have maps of the island in the Middle Ages which certainly 

 show it very much larger than now. Leaving out of all 

 account the fact that the ancient chroniclers were not in all 

 cases to be relied upon, especially when they were natives of 

 the countries they were describing. I think, after a very care- 

 ful study of probably everything of any consequence which has 

 been written on Heligoland, and an exhaustive examination 

 of the islands during a stay on them of a considerable portion 

 of an autumn, that there has been an entire misreading of the 



