INCIDENTAL EFFECTS OF HUMAN ACTION. 
539 
Incidental Effects of Human Action. 
I have more than once alluded to the collateral and un¬ 
sought consequences of human action as being often more mo¬ 
mentous than the direct and desired results. There are cases 
where such incidental, or, in popular speech, accidental, conse¬ 
quences, though of minor importance in themselves, serve to 
illustrate natural processes ; others, where, by the magnitude 
and character of the material traces they leave behind them, 
they prove that man, in primary or in more advanced stages 
of social life, must have occupied particular districts for a 
longer period than has been supposed by popular chronology. 
“ On the coast of Jutland,” says Forchhammer, “ wherever a 
bolt from a wreck or any other fragment of iron is deposited 
in the beach sand, the particles are cemented together, and 
form a very solid mass around the iron. A remarkable forma¬ 
tion of this sort was observed a few years ago in constructing 
the sea wall of the harbor of Elsineur. This stratum, which 
seldom exceeded a foot in thickness, rested upon common 
beach sand, and was found at various depths, less near the 
shore, greater at some distance from it. It was composed of 
pebbles and sand, and contained a great quantity of pins, and 
some coins of the reign of Christian IV, between the begin¬ 
ning and the middle of the seventeenth century. Here and 
there, a coating of metallic copper had been deposited by gal¬ 
vanic action, and the presence of completely oxydized metallic 
iron was often detected. An investigation undertaken by 
Councillor Reinhard and myself, at the instance of the Society 
of Science, made it in the highest degree probable that this 
formation owed its origin to the street sweepings of the town, 
which had been thrown upon the beach, and carried off and 
distributed by the waves over the bottom of the harbor.”* 
These and other familiar observations of the like sort show 
that a sandstone reef, of no inconsiderable magnitude, might 
* Geognostische Studien am Meeres Ufer , Leonhard und Beonn, Jahr- 
buch , 1841, pp. 25, 26. 
