103 
The agency of man sometimes produces changes of considerable importance. 
In Jutland by the inconsiderate clearing away of the forests, which in a great 
measure protected the maritime districts from encroachments, large tracts of fer- 
tile country have been transformed into sandy wastes, while at several parts of the 
coast, the sea has made inroads and swept away large masses of land to be scattered 
far and wide to form shoals or banks in the North Sea. Some slight checks to 
further encroachments have been adopted by sowing the seeds of those species of 
plants which I previously mentioned, and also by planting birch, fir, and other 
trees. 
The church of Skagen, in Jutland, like that of Eccles, in Norfolk, has been 
buried in a sandy drift. 
Movements of sand similar to those described have occurred in many parts of 
the United Kingdom. Bannow, once a borough town on the eastern coast of 
Ireland, and situated near the mouth of the river Ban, county of Wexford , now 
lies buried beneath an accumulation of sand. Although for many years only a 
single chimney protruded above the drift, the ancient borough continued up to 
the time of the Union to return two members to the Irish Parliament. As the 
owner of the property alone possessd a vote, there was no probability of a severe 
contest for the honour of representing a rickety old chimney and some heaps of 
barren. 
Opposite Bannow, on the western side of the estuary of the river Ban, stand 
the scanty remains of the once flourishing town of Clonmines, the ruins of its 
seven churches (so called), and a single farm house, alone mark the site where an 
active commerce had formerly been carried on. About the time of our Henrys, 
ships of two or three hundred tons burden could unload at the quays ; now this 
is no longer possible, the tide way has been so blocked up by the accumulation of 
sand at the bar, that the water of river Ban has to cut a narrow channel through 
the barrier at its mouth, by which fishing boats may enter the estuary and 
navigate its shallow waters, or occasionally a small coal-laden vessel contrives to 
cross the bar during the highest spring tides, and at low water deliver her cargo 
while lying high and dry on the ground. 
So much has the coast line been altered within a comparatively recent period, 
that a rock, which in the old charts is laid down as a danger for mariners to avoid, 
is now in shore at least fifty feet from the water. 
Although Clonmines itself is not buried in sand, yet its decay was clearly 
occasioned by the sandy invasion in its immediate vicinity, which destroyed a 
commodious harbour, and which no doubt was much used by the early English 
mariners, as it is situated close to Bag-en-Bun headland, where the first band of 
invaders under the command of Fitzstephen, landed in the year 1172. On the 
table are sketches of two of the ruins at Clonmines. Beyond the ridge depicted 
in the larger one lies the buried town of Bannow. 
At the head of Duncannon Strand, in the county of Wexford, is a small level 
sand-covered flat from which much of the sand has been carried away for agricul- 
