The Romance of Modern Geology: Describing in Simple but Exact Language the Making of the Earth with some Account of Prehistoric Animal Life
Edwin Sharpe Grew
9781465658852
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Everybody who has ever been to the coast of these islands has become aware that changes in the outline of the land are continually taking place. In some parts of the east coast of England, such as that which lies between Harwich and Walton-on-the-Naze, the sea appears to be slowly encroaching on the land, so that places which were grazing-fields twenty or thirty years ago are now covered by the sea at high tide, and at low tide are mere sandy wastes threaded by rivulets of sea-water. On the south coast of the Isle of Wight, between Sandown and the Culver Cliff, which is the most easterly point, the same loss of land is going on in another way. Some years ago a fort stood rather near the edge of the cliff, and it would have been possible to climb round the seaward wall of the fort. It is not possible now, for the outer sea-wall of the fort has long ago slipped into the sea; so have some of the inner fortifications: and it has been necessary to dismantle the whole of this fort lest every part of even the inner landward wall should follow the outer parts and slip with the solid ground down the cliff. It is easy to see what is happening here. The wind and the waves are undermining and honeycombing the cliff. They are weakening its base and its body, and so the upper crust on which the fort was built, and into which its foundations were dug, is slipping away. If we imagine for a moment that nothing was done to save the fort or protect the cliff, but that all was left to nature to deal with, it would not be hard to picture what would happen. The cliff would gradually be eaten away: its gravel and clay would be drawn into the sea, and the Isle of Wight would become a little smaller. The same thing is going on at a good many places along the coast of the British Isles, as well as on the coast of Florida and in the Gulf of California in America. The little islet of Heligoland in the North Sea, which once belonged to Great Britain, but was some years ago handed over to Germany, is so fiercely attacked by the sea in this way, that it almost has to be armour-plated in order to preserve its integrity. It is fenced in stone in order to protect it. What is happening on the coasts of islands like England and Heligoland is happening all over the world. It has always happened. If it had not happened in past ages there would be no British Isles at all, because once England and Scotland and Ireland were joined to Europe, and it would have been possible to walk across the North Sea from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. The North Sea was once dry land. But the sea encroached on it from the north, and the Atlantic Ocean battered a way through on the south, till the English Channel was bored through into the shallow waters of the newly-formed North Sea, and the lands that had once been part of Europe became these "sceptred isles set in the silver sea."
