In the Shetland Islands, which are continually exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic surge (for no land intervenes between their western shores and America), every year witnesses the removal of huge blocks of stone from their native beds by the terrific action of the waves. "In the winter of 1802," says Dr. Hibbert, in his description of that northern archipelago, "a tabular-shaped mass, eight feet two inches by seven feet, was dislodged from its bed and removed to a distance of from eighty to ninety feet. I measured the recent bed from which a block had been carried away the preceding winter (A.D. 1818), and found it to be seventeen feet and a half by seven feet, and the depth two feet eight inches. The removed mass had been borne to a distance of thirty feet, when it was shivered into thirteen or more lesser fragments, some of which were carried still farther from 30 to 120 feet. A block nine feet two inches by six feet and a half, and four feet thick, was hurried up the acclivity to a distance of 150 feet." The great storm of 1824, which carried away part of the breakwater at Plymouth, lifted huge masses of rock, from two to five tons in weight, from the bottom of the weatherside and rolled them fairly to the top of the pile. One block of limestone weighing seven tons was washed round the western extremity of the breakwater, and swept to a distance of 150 feet. In 1807, during the erection of the Bell Rock lighthouse, six large blocks of granite which had been landed on the reef were removed by the force of the sea and thrown over a rising ledge to the distance of twelve or fifteen paces, and an anchor weighing about twenty-two hundredweight was cast upon the surface of the rock. With such examples before our eyes, we cannot wonder that in the course of centuries all shores exposed to the full shock of the waves, lashing against them with every returning tide, should gradually be wasted and worn away. One kind of stone stands the brunt of the elements longer than another, but ultimately even the hardest rock must yield to the rage of the billows, which when provoked by wintry gales, batter against them with all the force of artillery.