The British coast-line presents three distinct phases: in many places it is retreating; in others it is advancing; while in a few it may be regarded as practically stationary. As examples of retreat, the shores of a large part of the east of England may be cited. In Holderness, for instance, a strip of land more than a mile broad has been carried away during the last eight centuries. Even since the Ordnance Survey maps were published in 1851, more than 500 feet have in some places been removed, the rate of demolition being here and there as much as five yards in a year. The advance of the coast takes place chiefly in sheltered bays, or behind or in front of projecting headlands and piers, and is due in large measure to the deposit of material which has been removed by the sea from adjoining shores. The amount of land thus added does not compensate for the quantity carried away, so that the total result is a perceptible annual loss. The best examples of a stationary coast-line, where there is no appreciable erosion by the waves and little visible accumulation of detritus, are to be found among the land-locked fjords or sea-inlets of the west coast of Scotland. In these sheltered recesses the smooth striated rocks of the Ice-Age slip under the sea, with their characteristic glaciated surfaces still so fresh that it is hard to believe that a long lapse of ages has passed away since the glaciers left them. The remarkable contrast between the scenery of the eastern and western coast-line of the British Islands arises partly from the preponderance of harder rocks on the west side, but probably in large measure upon the greater extent of the submergence of the western seaboard, whereby the sea has been allowed to penetrate far inland by fjords which were formerly glens and open straths. The details of coast-scenery vary with the rock in which they are developed. Nowhere can the effects of each leading type of rock upon landscape be more instructively studied than along the sea-margin. As distinct types of coast-scenery, reference may be made to sea-cliffs and rocky shores of granite, gneiss, basalt, massive sandstone and flagstone, limestone, alternations of sandstone shale or other strata, and boulder-clay, and to the forms assumed by detrital accumulations such as sand-dunes, shingle-banks, and flats of sand or mud. The concluding portion of the last lecture was devoted to an indication of the connection between the scenery of a country and the history and temperament of the people. This subject was considered from four points of view, the influence of landscape and geological structure being traced in the distribution of races, in national history, in industrial and commercial progress, and in national temperament and literature.[68] FOOTNOTES: