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 falhng 
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 quar- 
ter from north to south, and 6.00 yjards from east to 
west." 
In no country on the globe have the inroads of 
tjie sea been so extensive as in Holland. In the 
* The greatest depth of the straits between Dover and Car 
lais is twenty-nine fathoms, which exceeds only by one fathom 
ttie greatest depth of the Mississippi at New-Orleans. 
