steep escarpments are testimonies to the continual wasting action of the sea. Originally these cliffs must have descended to the bed of the sea, with the same slopes as characterize their land faces, and were then washed by the deep water of the sea without the intervention of the sand beaches which now, in most cases, stretch from them.

The form of the cliffs as they exist is due to the destructive action of the waves, to landslips, and weathering from the effect of rain and frost.

The wearing away has not been regular. Headlands composed of hard rocks project out boldly to low-water mark and beyond, while the softer rocks, which at one time adjoined them and formed a continuous line, have been gradually worn away, leaving indents and bays of various shapes and depths.

The fight between sea and land is continuous and unceasing, with the result that the sea has advanced and the land receded; the area of this country being gradually reduced.

In the few instances where land has been reclaimed, such land consists of alluvial matter brought down by the rivers, and deposited in the comparatively quiet water of an estuary, or on some sheltered part of the coast; or else, as where seaports formerly washed by the tides are now some distance inland, as is the case with Rye and Winchelsea, this has been due to the closing up of an estuary, or the indent of the coast on which they were situated, with shingle drifted along the beach.

The large tract of land gained from the sea which constitutes the greater part of the United Netherlands, has been formed by the transportation, by three large rivers, of detritus, wasted from the land through which they flow, and its discharge on to a coast, where, owing to the small rise and fall of the tides, the conditions approach those under which Deltas are formed in tideless seas; and which now is only maintained from the encroachments of the sea by a constant struggle between the operations of nature and the works of man.

A careful consideration of all the circumstances that attach to beaches can only lead to the conclusion that the results which have been attained must be due to other and mightier forces than those now in existence. These forces may be ascribed to the same agency that gave to this country the shape which it now assumes, and by which the valleys and rivers were scooped out.

At the close of the great Ice Age the melting of the vast bed of ice and snow, estimated at several hundred feet in thickness, which then covered this country, must have led to immense torrents of water escaping seaward, carrying with them the débris from the rock-surface, disintegrated by frost, and broken up by ice sheets and glaciers; and besides leaving deposits of gravel in the valleys and on the surface of the land, carried the degraded material to the sea-bed, and there formed a talus at the level of the water. This deposit, after the wear and tear caused by the waves during long ages, resulted in the formation of sand beaches.

As the sea erodes the land on its margin, the glacial deposits of stones and gravel deposited on the cliffs, falling on to the beaches, afford a constant, though limited, supply of shingle.

There is every indication that at one time the space that is now occupied by the English Channel, about 30 miles in width, was solid land, and that a deep depression has at some time been produced by the scouring away and waste of the chalk, leaving the steep cliffs which exist on both sides. M. Lamblardie,1 in his treatise on the coasts of Normandy, estimated that about seven per cent. of the eroded cliffs consisted of flints, producing five billion cubic fathoms (40 billion cubic yards) of sand and two billions of shingle, and that this accounts for the vast beds of shingle that are found along the coasts of the Channel and which choke the entrance to the harbours, and the sand which constitutes the long stretch of dunes along the coast of Flanders.

It is certain that the enormous mass of sand, which now covers the littoral of the sea and the beds of estuaries, cannot have been deposited by existing agencies. The degradation of the cliffs that takes place is quite inadequate to account for its existence, more especially as the harder rocks alone have afforded the material of which the sand of the shore is composed; the softer detritus from the limestone, chalk and clay cliffs having been carried away in suspension to the depths of the ocean. And on many parts of the coast the sand has not been derived from the adjacent cliffs.

For example, on the West Coast, in Morecambe Bay, the sand-beds cover an area of 90,000 acres, dry at low water, and in the adjacent Duddon estuary they cover 9000 acres. It is impossible that this enormous mass of material can ever have been

1 "Mémoire sur les Côtes de la Haute Normandie." Par M. De Lamblardie. Havre, 1789.

supplied by any forces now in operation. The rivers which discharge their contents into these estuaries are comparatively small streams, and quite incapable of performing such a task; and there is no wasting away of the coast-line at all comparable to the

formation of these sand-beds.

On the East Coast, the Wash covers an area of about 157,600 acres, of which about 84,000 acres consist of sand-beds, dry at low water, the average thickness of which may be taken at 20 feet. The author has, at various times and under various conditions, analyzed the water flowing down the rivers which empty into this estuary, and ascertained that the quantity of matter brought down in suspension has only been sufficient to provide material for the growth of the salt marshes, which have accreted along the coast during the 1700 years that have elapsed since the enclosure banks made by the Romans,1 and is satisfied that it is physically impossible for these sand-beds to have been produced by detritus brought down by the rivers under their present condition.

The enormous accumulation of shingle known as the Chesil Bank, extending 10 miles from Abbotsbury to Portland,2 must have been accomplished under conditions very different to those which now exist.

The drift along this part of the coast is eastward, and the cliffs to the west consist principally of lias, limestone, clay, sand, and shale, containing only a small quantity of stone. An examination of the shore to the westward shows that the pebbles on most of the beaches are different in character to those on the Chesil Bank, and very limited in quantity, and that there is no continuance of the drift for any great distance, its progress being stopped in the bays by the projecting headlands. So far as any records exist, there does not appear to have been any material alteration in the size or form of this bank.

The same remarks apply very much to the large accumulation at the entrance to the Solent, known as the Hurst Castle Shingle Bank. This bank extends across the channel, having its top 5 feet above high water, and stretches across the Solent for 3 miles, forming a steep submarine cliff from 20 to 70 feet in height. On the end of this bank a castle was erected four centuries ago, and,

"The History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire." Second edition. Chap. xvii. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. London, 1896.

2 A full description of these banks and their surrounding circumstances will be found in Chapter VII., "South Coast."

so far as the records show, the size and character of the bank has remained unchanged since then. There is no drift of shingle to the leeward of this bank. The cliffs to the windward consist of drift, containing a limited supply of gravel, the waste of which does no more at the present time than supply the wear and tear of the wave-action on the exterior surface of the bank.

From Selsea Bill to Brighton is a long stretch of nearly straight coast, the greater part of which is entirely devoid of cliffs, the remainder, being bordered by low mounds of sand and clay, devoid of anything that can afford a supply of beach material. West of Selsea Bill are some low cliffs containing a small quantity of gravel, but the stones that fall from these do not pass round the point. With the exception of a few flints, that may occasionally be drifted ashore from the chalk which crops up at low water in a few places, there is not, over this length of 30 miles, any source from which any recent supply of shingle can be derived. Yet at Pagham there is a large bank of this material, extending over 2 miles, the part above high water being 250 yards wide, and covering an area of about 160 acres; and the whole line of coast between here and Brighton is bordered by a bank of flint shingle, which tends to drift easterly. Where this drift has been arrested at Shoreham, the shingle has accumulated in a large bank nearly 4 miles long.

A large proportion of the pebbles of which the shingle is composed may be traced as having been derived from the chalk; they are most of them rounded, but scarcely any have the flat oval shape that is common to pebbles on most shingle banks. Many are quite angular, and are still coated with the white colour of the chalk from which they are derived. The only solution as to their existence in their present position that appears feasible is that they were deposited on the coast at the time when the chalk cliffs between England and France were disrupted, or when the sea broke through the neck of land which connected the Isle of Wight with the coast of Hampshire.1

The gravel beds, which form a thick cap on the east coast of Dorsetshire, gradually decline to the eastward along the coast of Hampshire, and there are traces which indicate that at one time a river ran along the coast, of which the rivers Avon, Lymington, Beaulieu, Test, and Itchen were tributaries, and discharged

1 A full description of these banks and their surrounding circumstances will be found in Chapter VII., "South Coast."

near to the east of Chichester harbour. The drift of this gravel, and the wearing away of chalk cliffs from 500 to 600 feet in height when the sea broke through the Solent passage, would lead to the deposit of a large quantity of flint and gravels, of which the accumulations at Hurst Castle and Selsea may probably be the remains.

It seems improbable that the extensive banks of shingle at Aldborough and Weybourne, each several miles in-length, can have accumulated from any waste of adjacent cliffs now going on. The present source of supply is derived almost entirely from the waste of the cliffs, and the falling on to the beach of gravel originally deposited on their surface at the breaking up of the glacial period.

That beach material is derived very largely from inland sources is shown by the colour of the flint pebbles. The flints derived from the waste of chalk cliffs are invariably black with a white exterior, while the colours of the majority of the flint pebbles forming the large accumulations of shingle, such as those at Hurst, the Chesil Bank, Dungeness, and on the beaches bordering on the chalk cliffs of the South Coast, are the same as those found in inland gravel beds, and vary from different shades of brown, grey, white, and red, the former being most prevalent. The average of several samples, taken from the beaches between Brighton and Dover, and from the Chesil Bank, gives the proportion as about 55 per cent. brown colour, 22 per cent. black derived from the chalk, and 10 per cent. grey, the remainder being red or other colours.

An inquiry addressed to fishermen and others, often very intelligent men and having a good local knowledge of some particular shingle beach, as to where the shingle has come from, generally elicits one of two answers, either that "it grows like everything else," or else "that it comes from the sea."

The opinion that shingle and sand are derived from the seabed is one that has a very general acceptance, and, so far as shingle is concerned, may, in a limited sense, be not altogether contrary to the fact.

On coasts where the sea has encroached, and the cliffs are wasting away, the floor of the sea for some distance out from the shore consists of the same rocks as the cliffs, and in some places remains uncovered by sand. During heavy seas rock fragments become disintegrated by the waves breaking in the shallow water