RAVAGES OF THE WAVES 21 
sea can do to its coasts if I remind you of some of 
its work accomplished within quite recent times. 
A map of the coast of Yorkshire, drawn in 1850, 
compared with a map made forty years later, shows 
that from the coast south of Bridlington the sea has 
removed a strip of land nearly three miles long and 
one hundred yards from the old cliff inwards. From 
Flamborough Head to Spurn Point the land is being 
removed at the rate of about two yards per year. In 
the course of centuries several towns and villages 
have disappeared. Ravenspur, where Henry IV. 
landed in 1399, has completely gone. Nine or ten 
centuries ago Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, was 
a flourishing city, but by 1349 the sea had swamped 
a great part of it, and now its chief remains are the 
ruins of a lonely church resting perilously on the 
edge of a cliff. Perhaps you have read the story of 
lost Lyonesse, a portion of land between Land’s End, 
the Lizard Point, and the Scilly Islands, which has 
disappeared under the sea. At a not very remote 
period Great Britain was continuous with the 
Continent ; the North Sea, the English Channel, and 
the Irish Sea did not exist ; but in course of time the 
sea made its way upon the land, and surrounded 
our country. Now it is trying to wash our land 
away, and it is calculated that Britain and the whole 
of Europe are being worn away by running water, 
chemical action, and the sea at such a rate, that if 
the wear and tear continue they will have entirely 
disappeared in less than a million years. This seems 
to be a melancholy calculation, but you and I will 
not be here to see the end, and in such a length of 
time things might happen to raise our land farther 
