BY HUGH MILLEK. 299 



escarpment as essentially differing from any possible coast-line. 

 And wliat is true of this midrib of the features is true of all 

 ribs collateral with it, down to ridges two steps high.* 



There is another difficulty that imagination must contend with 

 if it still clings to its surf-beaten shore lines. So closely serried 

 are their ranks, that water, hemmed in in many cases by rows of 

 complete break-waters, must lie almost as powerless as in a mill- 

 pond or canal. f 



Thus far the sea has been supposed as attacking the crags in 

 front. Could it not take them in flank? A slowly rising or 

 sinking coast, according to Phillips, might bring the ends of the 

 bars gradually within reach of the sea, which ''rushing in currents 

 and falling in breakers" might ''thoroughly explore" the rocky 

 texture. "This view is based," he adds, "on the supposition, 

 which no one will now dispute, of the gradual and successive 

 uncovering of the land."| But alas for the shortsightedness of 

 the human mind. Professor Prestwich, Phillips' first successor 

 in the Oxford chair of Geology, gave a distinct opinion in his first 

 inaugural Lecture, that equable risings and fallings of the earth 

 are contrary at once to "dynamical necessity" and geological 

 fact. II An ill-fitting drawer, to use a simple illustration, jerks 

 as it is pushed home : energy gathers before each momentary 

 overcoming of resistance ; and thus, Prestwich argues, and others 

 have argued before, must the subterranean energies accumulate 

 and break out. I have alluded to the successive coast-lines above 

 the present sea-level of Worway. I think no one could examine 

 certain of these without being perfectly satisfied that they re- 

 present a quiescent stage, during which the waves in some cases 



* The Rev. O. Fisher seems first to have used this argument against the sea-cliff tlicory. 

 Quart. Jour. Gcol. Sec, 1861. At that time he supposed outcrops to have been washed 

 bare by a rush of waters divided by sudden upheaval from the sea. This view he has 

 now withdrawn in favour of the ice plough, considered below. It is difficult to devise any- 

 thing new to illustrate the once vexed question of sea cliffs and escarpments. I have 

 since found that the method embodied in Fig. 2 has been already used by Trofessor Green 

 to illustrate escarpments near Sheffield. Geol. Mag., 18C8, p. 40. 



t This argument is Professor Ramsay's; Physical Geology and Geography of Great 

 Britain, Siid edition. We may also ask, wiiii him: Why should the ridges be scarped 

 uniformly on one side, whatever the general slope of the ground ? 

 t Geology of the Tliamos Valley, p. 488. 

 II " Nature," Vol. XI., p, 31C. 



Y 



