but to look along the west coast of Norway, the north-west of Scotland, the west of Ireland, and the south-west of England and of France; and we shall soon be convinced that the sea has made ravages upon those coasts in proportion to its power, and has left them in a shape corresponding to the composition of the land, in destroying the softer, and leaving the harder parts[14]. [Footnote 14: M. de Lamblardie, _ingénieur des ponts et chaussées_, has made a calculation, seemingly upon good grounds, with regard to the wasting of a part of the coast of France, between the Seine and the Somme. This coast is composed of _falaises_, (or chalk cliffs, like the opposite coast of England), which are 200 feet high above the level of the sea, composed of strata of marl, separated by beds of flint. This coast is found to be wasted, at an average, at the rate of one foot _per annum_. We may thus perhaps form some idea of the time since the coast of France and that of England had been here united, or one continued mass of those strata which are the same on both those coasts.] With those hard and rugged coasts of Britain and Ireland, let us contrast the east coasts; What a difference between these and the west side! Upon the west side, there are no sand banks left upon the coast; the mariner has nothing there to fear but rocks. It is otherwise on the east; here we find a tamer coast, and, in many places, a sandy bottom. On the west, nothing appears opposed to the storm of the ocean except the hardest and most solid rock; on the east, we find coasts exposed to the sea which could not have remained in a similar situation on the west. Let us but compare the two opposite coasts of England, viz. the promontory of Norfolk and Suffolk upon the one side, and Pembrokeshire and Carnarvonshire on the other, both similarly exposed, the one to the north east storm of the German sea, the other to the south west billows of the Atlantic. What a striking difference! The coast in the bay of Cardigan is a hard and strong coast compared with that of Norfolk and Suffolk; the one is strong schistus, the other the most tender clay; yet the soft coast stands protuberant to the sea, the harder coast is hollowed out into a bay; the one has no protection but the sands with which it is surrounded, the other had not remained till this day but for the protection of the most solid rocks of Pembrokeshire and Carnarvonshire, which oppose the fury of the waves.