The whole coast of Sussex has been incessantly encroached upon by the sea from time immemorial ; tracts of 400 acres have been carried away at one time ; and the old town of Brighton, which stood between the site of the present cliff and the sea in the reign of Elizabeth, has been wholly destroyed. The projecting foreland of Beachy Head is falling away rapidly : in the winter of 1852 many large portions gave way and fell into the sea, among which were some of a picturesque form, known as the Charleses, which were much visited by tourists. By the undermining of the sea on the coast of Dorsetshire, in All modern observations on the structure of the opposite shores, the bottom of the intervening sea, and the violence with which it is often agitated, give every degree of credibility to the tradition. But as Sicily is in that part so frequently convulsed by volcanic fires, it is very probable that subterranean movements have greatly contributed to the formation of the Straits of Messina. In like manner, there is every reason to believe that the island of Ceylon was at one time united to the continent of Hindustan. [ADAM'S BRIDGE, in GEOG. Div.] Humboldt is of opinion that the Caribbean Sea was once mediterra nean, inclosed by a circuit of land, of which St.-Domingo, Jamaica, and Cuba, are the principal remains ; and the whole form of the land from the promontory of Yucatan, through the above-named islands to Trinidad, and the coast of Cumana, with its deeply-indented shores, the numerous islets and shoals, give countenance to the conjecture, and justifies the belief that we see in the 'West India Islands the monuments of the irresistible force of the waves of the Atlantic, co-operating with subterranean agency, through an indefinite succes sion of ages.
To what, it may be asked, does all this lead ? If such a constant destruction of the land be a part of the system of Nature, it necessarily follows, that, if her laws continue to endure, the whole of our present continents must in time disappear under the surface of the sea. Undoubtedly to that, and to no other conclusion must we arrive ; but such a transference of the land which now rises above the surface of the sea is in perfect accordance with what geology tells us has been the economy of Nature in times past. All the stratified masses of which the crust of the earth is composed, however high their position may now be, must at one time have been at the bottom of the sea ; and the materials of which they are composed must have constituted the component parts of other rocks, which, in a former condition of the earth'a surface, must have been acted upon and abraded by similar agents. In every great group of strata we find beds composed of
large water-worn fragments, materials supplied, most probably, by rivers which had a rapid descent to the sea; but as such water courses form but a small proportion to those which traverse low and level countries, and earry only the finer particles to the sea, so we find that the beds of conglomerates bear only a small proportion to those strata the materials of which are in a comminuted state—an additional fact in support of the doctrine, that the formation of strata in past times took place under circumstances analogous to those which are now in progress ; that is, that the laws of the material world have continued unaltered. But renovation as well as decay is a part of the economy of Nature; and the same subterranean forces which raised our present continents, may, in after ages, repeat the process, and other Alps and other Andes may be produced from the materials which are now washed from our shoran, and are accumulating in the unfathomable depths of the oceen. We can in no way conclude the observations so well as by quoting the following eloquent passage from the ' Illustretions of the Iluttonian Theory :'—" How often these vicienitudes of decay and renovation have been repeated, it is not for us to determine : they constitute a eerier, of which we neither see the beginning nor the end—a circumstance that accords with what is known concerning other parts of the economy of the world. In the planetary motions, where geometry has carried the eye so far both into the future anal the past, we discover no mark either of the commencement or tho termination of the present order. It is unreasonable, indeed, to supped° that such marks should anywhere exist. The Author of nature has not given laws to the universe, which, like the institutions of men, carry in themselves the elements of their own destruction. He has not permitted, in His works, any symptom of infancy or of old age, or any sign by which we may estimate either their future or their past duration. He may put an end, as He no doubt gave a beginning, to the present system, at sonic determinate period; but we may safely conclude that this great catastrophe will not be brought about by any of the laws now existing, and that it is not indicated by anything which we perceive."