MINERALS AND GEOLOGY OF CANADA. ' 443 
arts of the eastern shores of England, and the opposite or western 
shores of France, for example, the sea has thus carried off, within 
the present century, from fifty to over one hundred yards of coast— 
measured backwards from the shore-line—and for a distance of many 
miles. Grave-yards, shewn by maps of no ancient date to have been 
located at considerable distances from the sea, have become exposed 
upon the cliff-faces ; and forts on the French coast, built by the First 
Napoleon, at two hundred metres and upwards from the edge of the 
cliff, now lie in ruins on the beach, or have altogether disappeared. 
These localities are mentioned as being more especially known to the 
writer ; but in all parts of the world examples may be found of the 
same destructive process. In the clay and sandy bluffs of our own 
lakes, as at Scarbro’ Heights on Lake Ontario, and elsewhere, the 
effects of this action may be equally studied. 
On a subsequent page it will be shewn that these results of denuda- 
tion, however striking in themselves, were greatly surpassed by those 
of former geological epochs; but confining our view at present to 
modern effects only, it must be evident to all that an enormous amount 
of sedimentary matter is annually, or even daily, under process of 
accumulation. The question then arises as to what becomes of this. 
The reply is obvious. The detrital matter thus obtained, is deposited 
in lakes or at river-mouths, or along the sea-shore, or over the sea-bed 
—contributing day by day to the formation of new rocks. In other 
words, existing rock-masses, worn down by atmospheric agencies, by 
streams and rivers, and the action of the sea, supply the materials for 
other and, of course, newer deposits. And thus, when we look upon 
a piece of stone derived from one of these, we may picture to our- 
selves the scene of its formation, and, with the poet, hear— 
The moaning of the homeless sea, 
The sound of streams that swift or slow 
Draw down AZonian hills, and sow 
The dust of continents to be— 
—for truly, is it the dust of new continents that is thus being depo- 
sited, atom by atom, by these slow but continued processes. 
All sediments diffused through deep or quiet water, arrange them- 
selves, under general conditions, in horizontal or nearly horizontal 
beds: the latter, if deposited on gently-sloping shores. Professor 
H. D. Rogers, in his recently.published Report on the Geology of 
Pennsylvania, contests to some extent this usually-received view, and 
Vou. Vi. 2H 
