WAVES AND TIDES. 37 



The coasts of Europe furnish examples on a more magnificent scale, 

 and have been more carefully studied. The cliffs of Norfolk are carried 

 away at a rate of three feet, and those of Yorkshire six feet, annually. 

 The church of the Eeculvers, on the coast of Kent, near the mouth of 

 the Thames, stood, in the time of Henry VIII, one mile inland. Since 

 that time the sea has steadily advanced until, in 1804, a portion of the 

 churchyard fell in, and the church was abandoned as a place of wor- 

 ship. The church itself, ere this, would have been undermined and 

 fallen in, had it not been protected by artificial means. There are many 

 instances in the German Ocean of islands which have been entirely 

 washed away during the historic period. 



The tidal currents through the British and Irish Channels, along the 

 western coasts of Ireland and Scotland, among the Orkneys and Heb- 

 rides, and especially along the coast of Norway, are very powerful. 

 Along this latter coast it forms the celebrated Maelstrom. The erosive 

 effects of the sea are, therefore, very conspicuous. On the south and 

 east coast of England the erosion is now progressing rapidly. On the 

 west coast of Ireland and Scotland the waste is not now so great, be- 

 cause the softer material is all removed, but the configuration of the 

 coast shows the waste which it has suffered. A glance at a good map 

 of Ireland shows a deeply-indented western coast, composed entirely 

 of alternating rocky promontories and deep bays. On the western coast 

 of Scotland, and especially on the Orkney, Shetland, and Hebrides Isl- 

 ands, the wasting effect of the sea has been still greater. Not only 

 have we here the same character of coast as already described (as seen 

 in the friths of Scotland), but many small islands have been eroded, 

 until only a nucleus of the hardest rock is left ; and even these have 

 been worn until they seem but the ghastly skeletons of once fertile isl- 

 ands. Figs. 30 and 31 will give some idea of the appearance of these 

 spectral islands. 



