400 F. p. GULLIVER — CUSP ATE FORELANDS. 



Type 410 



Other cuspate deltas , 421 



Cusps from island-tying 421 



Introduction* 



During my work at Cambridge with Professor Davis attention has been 

 directed to shorelines and the forms which are systematical!}^ developed 

 during successive stages of shore evolution along the common border of 

 the land and sea. It was early seen that a distinction is needed between 

 the oldland, all those preexisting i)ortions of more or less wasted forma- 

 tions, and the newer land, the coastal i)lain, which borders and is com- 

 posed of the detritus from the oldland. In a similar manner a distinction 

 is needed between the forms cut and those accumulated in the course of 

 shore evolution. At the beginning of a cycle the waves attack the coast 

 at all points, cutting or nipping back the initial f form of the land into a 

 cliff; while at a later stage transportation of material alongshore begins 

 and the waste from the edge and bottom of the land, together with the river 

 sediment, is built out at certain points in front of the older mainland in 

 deposits of various sha})es, which are appropriately grouped together 

 under the general term forelands.^ 



The word foreland has been locally ai)plied to a few headlands, as the 

 Foreland in Devon on tiie Bristol channel, the North and South Forelands 

 in Kent count}^ England, and the lUoody Foreland in northwestern Ire- 

 land. As such projecting i)r()montories of the mainland have the well 

 established generic term of " headland " in geography, the use of the 

 word foreland in a few places as the local name for certain headlands 



* List of Abbreviations. 

 Austr. = K. n. K. militfir-geograpliischep Institut, Austria, 1 : 75,000. 

 C. S. = United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, various scales. 

 Denm. = Generalstabens Kort over Danmark, 1 : 100,000 

 Eng. = Ordnance Survey, England, 1 : ()3,:i00. 

 G. S. = United States Geological Survey, 1 : 02,500. 

 Germ. = Karte des Deutschen Reiches, 1 : 100,000. 



HoU. = Topographische en militaire kaarte van het koningrijk Nederlanden, 1 :50,ooo. 

 H. O. = Hydrographic Office, United States Navy, various scales. 

 Ital. = Institute geografico militare, Italy, 1 : 100,000. 



f Initial, as used above, is here proposed as the technical term to define the form at the begin- 

 ning of any geographic cycle. Any dynamic process which produces a change in the relative 

 position of land and sea may interrupt a cycle at any stage of development and cause the initial 

 form of the new cycle. Later stages and forms may be called appropriately sequential. These 

 terms are offered to avoid tlie misconception, on account of their vernacular meaning, of the terms 

 constructional and destructional, hitherto used V)y some writers for the identical ideas. 



I Consult Penek : Morphologic dcr Erdoberflache, Stuttgart, 180-1, and compare his use of Vor- 

 land and Vorgelagerte, vol. ii, pp. 17, 444, 548; also J. A. de Luc : Geological Travels, 1810, vol. i ; 

 John Wiggins: The Practice of embanking lands from the Sea, 1852, pp. 198-200. 



