101 



Bournemouth Bay. The stern perpendicularity of the two former 

 stands in marked relief against the broad sweeping bend of coast- 

 line in the last. When the sea broke through the connecting ridge 

 of chalk between the Needles and Old Harry the soft sandstone 

 rapidly eroded and a wide regular bend of coastline was carved by 

 the subsequent set of the currents and tides. 



Great regularity of coastline is common, too. 



If the chalk coastal areas of our own islands be examined it 

 will be found that there is considerable parallelism of the contour 

 lines in these areas and the general direction of parallelism is 

 along the coastal outline. In the regions of the limestone and chalk 

 situated inland, screes are very common and occasionally along 

 the shore-line where the lower formations fringe the coast the 

 debris occurs as screes on a platform in front of the limestone. 

 An excellent illustration of this is to be found at Portland and 

 under the heights of St. Alban's Head. Screes, however, are not 

 common on our chalk coasts as in most places where they occur 

 the water is deep, and the chalk rises directly out of the sea. The 

 chalk escarpments present some similarity to a sea coast and have 

 occasionally been taken as sea cliffs. If the chalk escarpment were 

 a sea cliff it must not merely resemble a cliff, but it must be a 

 chalk cliff. In a few instances this appears so, but, as pointed 

 out before, a chalk coast is a fairly straight line, while the chalk 

 escarpment is freely intersected by coombes and valleys. The 

 shore-line, too, must follow the sea level, but the base of chalk 

 escarpments often rises and falls with more or less gentle slope. 

 The land often rises in elevation behind a chalk cliff, but in the 

 escarpments it almost invariably falls in altitude, Further, while 

 coasts frequently pass from one geological formation to another 

 a true escarpment always keeps to one formation. 



The scenery of a country greatly depends upon its geological 

 structure and the arrangement of the rocks on the earth's surface. 

 Thus the type of scenery characteristic of Broads or Fens is closely 

 allied to that of Holland in appearance, whilst the craggy crests 

 and spires of the mountains of Wales resemble those of Switzer- 

 land, and between these two great types one meets with gradations 

 of picturesqueness, each variety possessing detail peculiar to itself. 



Limestone regions are among the fairest of our own fair 

 country. The elevated and invigorating uplands and moors are 

 mottled with masses of grey bare rock seamed deep with clefts 

 and fissures, and in the cool shade of these steep cliffs are to be 

 found carpets of bladder fern or hart's tongue growing in pro" 

 fusion along the lower channels of the scanty water supply of these 

 areas. Along the top of the cliffs and downs are stretches of 

 short, crisp grass, which afford ample pasturage for sheep. Small 

 streams of water spring from cracks and crevices, and make their 

 way downward in clear brooks and cascades through deep narrow 

 gorges of a somewhat miniature type. 



The material on which deunding agents work plays an im- 

 portant part in the shaping of geographical features of the land- 



