Let us next turn to a portion of the coast-line of Great Britain which is neither defended, on the one hand, by barriers of rock, nor attacked, on the other, by the full fury of the Atlantic currents. Along the whole coast of Yorkshire we find evidences of a continual process of dilapidation. Between the projecting headland of Flamborough and Spurn Point (the coast of Holderness) the waste is particularly rapid. Many spots, which are now mere sandbanks, are marked in the old maps of Yorkshire as the sites of ancient towns and villages. Speaking of Hyde (one of these), Pennant says: ‘Only the tradition is left of this town.’ Owthorne and its church have been for the most part destroyed, as also Auburn, Hartburn, and Kilnsea. Mr. Phillips, in his ‘Geology of Yorkshire,’ states that not unreasonable fears are entertained that, at some future time, Spurn Point itself will become an island, or be wholly washed away, and then the ocean, entering into the estuary of the Humber, will cause great devastation. Pennant states that ‘several places, once towns of note upon the Humber, are now only recorded in history; and Ravensperg was at one time a rival of Hull, and a port so very considerable in 1332, that Edward Baliol and the confederate English barons sailed from hence to invade Scotland; and Henry IV., in 1399, made choice of this port to land at, to effect the deposal of Richard II.; yet the whole of this has since been devoured by the merciless ocean; extensive sands, dry at low water, are to be seen in their stead.’ The same writer also describes Spurn Point as shaped like a sickle, and the land to the north, he says, was ‘perpetually preyed on by the fury of the German Sea, which devours whole acres at a time.’ The decay of the shores of Norfolk and Suffolk is also remarkably rapid. Sir Charles Lyell relates some facts which throw an interesting light on the ravages which the sea commits upon the land here. It was computed that when a certain inn was built at Sherringham, seventy years would pass before the sea could reach the spot: ‘the mean loss of land being calculated from previous observations to be somewhat less than one yard annually.’ But no allowance had been made for the fact that the ground sloped _from_ the sea. In consequence of this peculiarity, the waste became greater and greater every year as the cliff grew lower. ‘Between the years 1824 and 1829, no less than seventeen yards were swept away;’ and when Sir Charles Lyell saw the place, only a small garden was left between the building and the sea. I need hardly add that all vestiges of the inn have long since disappeared. Lyell also relates that, in 1829, there was a depth of water sufficient to float a frigate at a point where, less than half a century before, there stood a cliff fifty feet high with houses upon it.