fable that may be dismissed, is that St Michael's Mount was surrounded by a vast tract of woodland, in which were villages, and where settled hermits. It did rise above a forest, but that was in a prehistoric period. But if the sea gains on the land but imperceptibly in one way, it gains in another on the north coast, by the action of the wind carrying the sand inland, and overwhelming field after field. It is not a little curious to mark, nevertheless, how a small dribble of a stream will arrest the onward march of the sand-dunes. [1] D.C. Whitley, "The Head of Rubble," in _Journal of the R. Inst. of Cornwall_, XVII. p. 67. At Constantine by Padstow as already said the old church is enveloped in sand-hills, so is that of St Enodoc. The Perran Sands have so encroached that they extend over a mile and a half inland and have in process of time swallowed up two churches and a village. The Gear Sands have even climbed a hill to the height of 300 ft. The Godrevy, Upton and Phillack towans have moved inland from St Ives' Bay and engulfed the residence of the ancient kings of Cornwall at Riviere. The same phenomenon has not taken place in the south, but there the estuaries have been silted up by the wash from the stream tin works. Formerly boats could come up to Tregony. Now the Fal is choked with detritus for miles down. Restronguet creek bore vessels to Perranarworthal. Now it is completely silted up, only a trickle of water running down through desolate morasses and flats resulting from the workings of the miners. =11. The Coast--Tides, Islands, and Lighthouses.= Off the mouth of the English Channel the tidal-stream is materially influenced by the indraft and outset of the channel, and is found to run northward and eastward with a falling tide at Dover, and southward and westward with a rising tide at that place. At spring tides the tide rises in Padstow Bay 22 ft., at Bude a foot higher, at the Lizard only 14-1/2 ft., at Scilly 16 ft. Nowhere on the Cornish coast is there the enormous rise seen at St Malo, where ordinary tides rise from 23 to 26 ft., and spring tides 48 ft. above low-water mark. On account of the varying force with which the channel and spring tides blend south of the Scilly group the stream is incessantly altering, but north of this towards the Bristol Channel, the stream becomes more regular, and while the water is ebbing at Dover, it sets northward turning sharply round Trevose Head into the Bristol Channel, and so when the tide is flowing at Dover, it is running with equal speed in ebb out of the channel and along the coast towards Scilly. [Illustration: Round Island, Scilly]