Recent soundings taken off the west and south-west coast of Ireland have fully proved that a very large part of the island has been washed away by the fury of the west wind and the sea, and that at some far-back epoch it extended nearly three hundred miles further towards the south-west. The sea, for some two or three hundred miles west and south-west of Ireland, is shallow--hardly deeper than the Channel between Great Britain and Ireland--but at that distance there is a sudden increase of over two thousand feet in the depth of the sea. Scientists think that this submerged mountain was once the south-west coast of Ireland, and that the shallow sea between the present coast and the deep sea, about three hundred miles south-west, was once dry land, and, of course, part of Ireland. There do not seem to be any reasonable grounds to doubt this theory, for the fury of the sea is every year washing away both land and rock on these western coasts, and the way it has encroached, even in the memory of living persons, is very remarkable. Not a year passes during which hundreds of thousands of tons of rocks are not washed away from cliff and mountain by the ceaseless assaults of the stormy sea that beats with such force on the western coast of Ireland. Were it not for the cliffs and mountains that guard the whole of the west coast, the probability is that thousands of acres would be submerged every year, until there would be very little of the country left in the long run. It may be said that there must be a time coming when those barriers of cliff and mountain that now guard almost the entire west coast will be swept away, seeing that they are being constantly broken down and washed into the sea. Such a time must certainly come, unless some unforeseen event should alter the course of the Gulf Stream, or change the prevailing west and south-west winds to opposite points of the compass. The question is, How long will it be until there is real danger from the encroachment of the sea on the west coast of Ireland? This is a question which the most profound geologist living could not answer with even approximation to correctness. It is impossible to know what amount of erosion takes place every year, or what amount has taken place in any given number of years; but that not only the cliffs of Moher, but the still more gigantic ones of Slieve More in Achill, and Slieve League in Donegal, must finally succumb to the fury of the Atlantic's waves there can hardly be a doubt. Thousands of years may elapse before the cliff barriers on the western coast become so weakened that the island will be in danger from the assaults of the sea.