File:The earth and its inhabitants (1881) (14597587689).jpg

Identifier: earthitsinhabita481recl (find matches)
Title: The earth and its inhabitants ..
Year: 1881 (1880s)
Authors: Reclus, Elisée, 1830-1905 Ravenstein, Ernest George, 1834-1913 Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry), 1833-1912
Subjects: Geography
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries

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plit up into laminae. The moistand saliferous air proves exceedingly destructive, and on many hills the Iockshave been broken into quadrangular masses, hardly to be distinguished fromthe artificial structures raised by the ancient inhabitants of the country. Thewaves, however, are the principal agents of destruction along the coast. Yastcaverns, locally known as Hugos, have been scooped out at the foot of * Carew, Survev of Cornwall. 78 THE BRITISH ISLES. the cllfFs, and into these the waves rusli with great noise. Isolated pinnacles,washed by the oceans foam, rise beyond the line of clifis, whilst sunken rocks, theremains of ancient promontories, still break the force of the waves, above whichthey formerly rose. Old chronicles tell us of hills and tracts of coast which havebeen swallowed up by the sea. Mount St. Michael, in Mounts Bay, rose formerly,like its namesake ofithe coast of Normandy, in the midst of a wooded plain, which Fig. 42.—The Aumeu Kmohts, neau Lands End, Cornwall.
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has disappeared beneath the waves. The church which crowns its summit isreferred to in ancient documents as Hoar Kirk in the Wood, but the famousMount is now alternately a peninsula and an island, according to the state of thetide. The wind, more especially along the north coast, has likewise aided inchanging the form of the littoral region, for it has piled up dunes, or towans,which travel towards the interior of the country until fixed by plantations, orconsolidated into sardstone through the agency of the oxide of iron which the THE COENISH PENINSULA. 79 saud contains.* Oscillations of the land appear likewise to have had a laro-e sharein the changes witnessed along the coasts of Cornwall and Devonshire. On thebeach which the retiring tide uncovers at the foot of the Exmoor cliffs alono-the Bristol Channel, may be seen the remains of ancient forests which can havegrown only on dry land. The submarine forest of Babbacombe, on the southerncoast of Devonshire, between Teignmouth and T

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