=Cross bedding.= There is an apparent exception to this rule where strata whose upper and lower surfaces may be about horizontal are made up of layers inclined at angles which may be as high as the angle of repose. In this case each stratum grew by the addition along its edge of successive layers of sediment, precisely as does a sand bar in a river, the sand being pushed continuously over the edge and coming to rest on a sloping surface. Shoals built by strong and shifting tidal currents often show successive strata in which the cross bedding is inclined in different directions. =Thickness of sea deposits.= Remembering the vast amount of material denuded from the land and deposited offshore, we should expect that with the lapse of time sea deposits would have grown to an enormous thickness. It is a suggestive fact that, as a rule, the profile of the ocean bed is that of a soup plate,--a basin surrounded by a flaring rim. On the _continental shelf_, as the rim is called, the water is seldom more than six hundred feet in depth at the outer edge, and shallows gradually towards shore. Along the eastern coast of the United States the continental shelf is from fifty to one hundred and more miles in width; on the Pacific coast it is much narrower. So far as it is due to upbuilding, a wide continental shelf, such as that of the Atlantic coast, implies a massive continental delta thousands of feet in thickness. The coastal plain of the Atlantic states may be regarded as the emerged inner margin of this shelf, and borings made along the coast probe it to the depth of as much as three thousand feet without finding the bottom of ancient offshore deposits. Continental shelves may also be due in part to a submergence of the outer margin of a continental plateau and to marine abrasion. =Deposition of sediments and subsidence.= The stratified rocks of the land show in many places ancient sediments which reach a thickness which is measured in miles, and which are yet the product of well-nigh continuous deposition. Such strata may prove by their fossils and by their composition and structure that they were all laid offshore in shallow water. We must infer that, during the vast length of time recorded by the enormous pile, the floor of the sea along the coast was slowly sinking, and that the trough was constantly being filled, foot by foot, as fast as it was depressed. Such gradual, quiet movements of the earth's crust not only modify the outline of coasts, as we have seen, but are of far greater geological importance in that they permit the making of immense deposits of stratified rock.