4.32 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Tlic sliallowino; and westing are now increasing witli sncli speed, f.liat they 
may be nieasnrcd almost IVoni week to week, and ciglit I'ect is probai)ly all 
that can be seenred at low water s])ring-iides ; this will be speedily decreased 
to seven, 1 hen to six or five feet, and the trilling s wash way, the memorial of 
the line channel of 1820, will liU up and be obliterated. 
The silting of the harbonr is almost wholly caused by the inwash from 
the sand-shoals of the Hook in the hist few years. This result will follow in 
more rapid stages so soon as the sand-banks, which arc northing as well as 
westing, shall have northed to a certain line across the mouth of the harbour. 
Towards tliis line the sands have moved in twenty years a cpiarter of a mile in 
the three fathom depth. For a time the ratio of northing will be possibly a 
retarding, and not an accelerating one, but in a very few years — perhaps thirty, 
or less — the bar will have advanced northerly to a line with the sunk vessel. 
Por a century, and slightly for two centuries, every tide had taken in sand, but 
a portion was swept out again. But during the last fifty years every flood 
tide has taken in increasing quantities of sand, while no ebb tide ever takes 
any out. When the bar shall have passed a certain line, the sand will come 
within the direct intlueuce of the prodigious velocity and power of the water 
rushing into the confined and narrow entrance, and will move in great quanti- 
iities ; and although a little may be forced back on the bar at the ebb, a great 
deposit will be made internally, and one of the finest harbours of Great Britain 
will be converted into a mere marine marsh. 
To remedy this, Mr. Brannon proposes to restore the entrance to Poole Har- 
bour to a straight channel of four or five fathoms depth ; or greater if desired. 
The indispensable work for which would be a breakwater or pier from South 
Haven, to secure a new channel coincident with the ancient one, or between 
that and the eighteenth century openings. 
T/ie Geology of Weymouth and the Manil of Portland. By Robert Damon. 
London : E. Stanford, Charing Cross. 1800. 
A writer in the " Athenjeum" a short time since described the requisites of a 
guide-book as consisting in having the matter good and reliable, and well 
arranged, without any superfluity in the shape of fine wi'iting or grandiloquent 
descriptions. It is certainly something to have all the materials so well arranged 
that you know where to turn at once for anything you want to find ; and so 
far as reliable matter and this principle of arrangement are concerned, Mr. 
Damon's " Geology of Weymouth" is a model guide-book, and no tourist or 
amateur geologist should visit the beautiful neighbourhood in which he resides 
without it. 
The illustrations are well selected, and generally well executed, something 
to say of a geological book illustrated by wood engravings ; for the generality 
of these in works on that science are execrably bad, as any one may be satisfied 
by turning even to some of the works of our best a\ithors. The printer, how- 
ever, has done nothing towards showing them off. 
Mr. Damon seems to have taken great pains to produce a useful and good 
result, and we hope the sale of his little book may bring the appropriate reward. 
