I have selected these portions of the coast of Great Britain, not because the destruction of our shores is greater here than elsewhere, but as serving to illustrate processes of waste and demolition which are going on around all the shores, not merely of Great Britain, but of every country on the face of the earth. Here and there, as I have said, there are instances in which a contrary process seems to be in action. Low-lying banks and shoals are formed—sometimes along stretches of coast extending for a considerable distance. But when we consider these formations closely, we find that they rather afford evidence of the energy of the destructive forces to which the land is subject than promise to make up for the land which has been swept away. In the first place, every part of these banks consists of the debris of other coasts. Now we cannot doubt that of earth which is washed away from our shores, by far the larger part finds its way to the bottom of the deep seas; a small proportion only can be brought (by some peculiarity in the distribution of ocean-currents, or in the progress of the tidal wave) to aid in the formation of shoals and banks. The larger, therefore, such shoals and banks may be, the larger must be the amount of land which has been washed away never to reappear. And although banks and shoals of this sort grow year by year larger and larger, yet (unless added to artificially) they continue always either beneath the surface of the water in the case of shoals, or but very slightly raised above the surface. Now, if we suppose the destruction of land to proceed unchecked, it is manifest that at some period, however remote, the formation of shoals and banks must come to an end, owing to the continual diminution of the land from the demolition of which they derive their substance. In the meantime, the bed of the sea would be continually filling up, the level of the sea would be continually rising, and thus the banks would be either wholly submerged through the effect of this cause alone, or they would have so slight an elevation above the sea-level that they would offer little resistance to the destructive effects of the sea, which would then have no other land to act upon.