142 



ACTION OF THE SEA. 



(England) to the Continent, in the same manner as 

 it now gradually forces a passage through rocks of 

 the same mineral composition, and often many- 

 hundred feet high, upon the coast." 



In confirmation of this opinion, it is mentioned 

 that Friesland, which was once a part of North 

 Holland, was in the thirteenth century severed 

 from it by the action of the sea, which in about 100 

 years formed a strait more than half as wide as that 

 which separates England and France.* The en- 

 croachments of the sea upon the coast of Sussex 

 (England) have been very great ; as within eighty 

 years there are notices of about twenty inroads, in 

 which tracts of land of from 20 to 400 acres in ex- 

 tent were overwhelmed at once. In the town of 

 Brighton, twenty-two houses were destroyed by the 

 sea in the year 1665, and in 1705 all the remainder, 

 113 in number, which were situated under the cliff, 

 were swept away. 



A very extensive fall of ground, occasioned by 

 the undermining of the cliffs, is thus described in 

 Hutchins's History of Dorsetshire. " Early in the 

 morning the road was observed to crack ; this con- 

 tinued increasing, and before two o'clock the 

 ground had sunk several feet, and was in one con- 

 tinued motion, but attended with no other noise 

 than what was occasioned by the separation of the 

 roots and branches, and now and then a falling 

 rock. At night it seemed to stop a little, but soon 

 moved again ; and, before morning, the ground from 

 the top of the cliff to the water side had sunk in 

 some places fifty feet perpendicular. The extent 

 of ground that moved was about a mile and a guar- 

 ter from north to south, and 600 yards from east to 

 west." 



In no country on the globe have the inroads of 

 the sea been so extensive as in Holland. In the 



* The greatest depth of the straits between Dover and Ca- 

 lais is twenty-nine fathoms, which exceeds only by one fathom 

 the greatest depth of the Mississippi at New-Orleans, 



