of some old fishermen then alive, that there stretched along the shore in front of the grounds of Anchorfield, an extensive piece of links on which they used to dry their nets, but which had then been entirely washed away. The direct road between Leith and Newhaven used to pass along the shore to the north of Leith Fort, but it has long been demolished, and the road has been carried inland by a circuitous route.1 Until the waste was checked by the numerous bulwarks and piers which have been erected along the coast, the waves broke at high tide upon a low cliff of stiff blue till or boulder-clay, which readily yielded to the combined influences of the weather. Hence large

slices of the coast-line were from time to time precipitated to the beach. A footpath ran along the top of the bank overhanging high-water mark, and portions of it were constantly removed on the landslips of clay. By this means, as the ground sloped upwards from the sea, the cliff was always becoming higher with every successive excavation of its sea-front. The risk to foot-passengers was thus great; so many accidents, indeed, occurred there, that the locality was long known in the neighbourhood as the Man-Trap. Nearly a quarter of a century ago this dangerous piece of cliff disappeared; not, however, by the destructive force of the waves, but under the combined operations of mattock, wheelbarrow, and waggon. A branch railway was carried along the coast-line, the accumulated rubbish from some long cuttings through boulder-clay was shot over the seacliff, completely covering it up, and thus carrying the land out to sea again. The large piece of ground thus reclaimed has been strongly protected by a bulwark.

Higher up the Firth of Forth, at the Bay of Barnbougle, a lawn of considerable extent, once intervening between the

1 Stevenson, Mem. Wer. Soc. vol. ii.

old castle and the sea, has been demolished. Even in the upper reaches of the estuary, above the narrow strait at the Ferries, the waves have removed a considerable tract of land, which once lay between the sea and the present road leading westward from Queensferry. Similar effects have likewise been produced on the northern shores at Culross and eastwards by St. David's, Burntisland,1 Kirkcaldy, and Dysart. The seaports along this coast have all suffered more or less from encroachments of the sea-roads, fences, gardens, fields, piers, and even dwelling-houses having been from time to time carried away. In the parish of Crail some slender remains of a priory existed down to the year 1803. These, along with the old gardens and fences, are now wholly removed; but the adjoining grounds still retain the name of the croftlands of the priory. At St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton's castle is said to have been originally some distance from the sea, but it now almost overhangs the beach, and must ere long fall a prey to the waves.2

1 At the east end of the town of Burntisland the sea comes now far in upon the land; some persons in the town, who died not long since, did remember the grassy links reach to the Black Craigs, near a mile into the sea now.'-Sibbald's Fife and Kinross, p. 152. The waste still continues, in spite of the strong railway embankment, much damage being done by occasional storms.

2 R. Stevenson, op. cit. 'The learned Mr. George Martine (Reliquia Sancti Andreæ, chap. ii. p. 3) relates it as a tradition received that the ancient Culdees, Regulus and his companions, had a cell dedicated to the Blessed Virgin about a bow flight to the east of the shoar of St. Andrews, a little without the end of the peer (now in the sea), upon a rock called at this day Our Lady's Craig: the rock is well known, and seen every day at low water. The Culdees thereafter, upon the sea's encroaching, built another house where the house of the Kirkheugh now stands, called Sancta Maria de rupe, with St. Rule's Chapel, and says in his time there lived people in St. Andrews who remembered to have seen men play at bowls upon the east and north sides of the castle of St. Andrews, which now the sea covereth at every tide.'-Sibbald's Fife and Kinross, p. 152.

Passing northwards along the eastern coast of Scotland we find that the sea has encroached to a marked extent on the sands of Barry, on the northern side of the Firth of Tay. The lighthouses which were formerly erected at the southern extremity of Button Ness have been from time to time removed about a mile and a quarter farther northward, on account of the shifting and wasting of these sandy shores. The spot on which the outer lighthouse stood early in the seventeenth century, was found to be in 1816 two or three fathoms under water, and at least three-quarters of a mile within flood mark.

If the waves can bring about such important changes, even when rolling into more or less sheltered estuaries, we may expect that their power will be found still greater where, without any bounding land to curb their fury, they can rush in from open sea, and fall with unbroken violence upon an exposed coast-line which has no bulwark of durable rock to oppose to their advance. That this is the case with the North Sea is shown by the form of the coast-line, the known effects of storms, and by actual experiment of the power of the breakers. The force with which the waves of this ocean fall on objects exposed to their fury has been measured with great care at the Bell-Rock Lighthouse. This massive structure, rising 112 feet above the sea-level, 'is literally buried in foam and spray to the very top during ground swells when there is no wind.' Experiments were made there from the middle of September 1844 to the end of March 1845, and the greatest recorded pressure was 3013 pounds on the square foot. Mr. T. Stevenson however, informs us that on the 27th November 1827, the spray rose 117 feet above the foundations, being equivalent to a pressure of nearly three tons on the square foot,1 and a ladder

1 Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin. xvi. 28.

was wrenched from its fastenings at a height of 86 feet and washed round to the other side. Such enormous force cannot but produce marked effects on all rocks exposed to its fury. In May 1807, during the building of the lighthouse, six large blocks of stone 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 22 cwt., was thrown up upon the rock. This power of transport from the surrounding sea-bed during severe gales has been frequently observed here. Stones measuring upwards of 30 cubic feet, or more than two tons in weight, have often been cast upon the reef from deeper water. These large boulders are so familiar to the light-keepers at this station as to be by them termed travellers.3

The Scottish coast-line from the mouth of the Firth of Tay to Stonehaven is formed of Old Red Sandstone, and, as usual with that formation, presents a picturesque succession of sea-cliffs of red sandstone worn into tunnels and solitary stacks, crags of hard volcanic rocks that seem ready to topple into the surf, creeks in which the gurgling tides are for ever rolling to and fro, caves sometimes out of reach of the waves, and then coated with mosses and ferns, sometimes at a low level, and filled well-nigh to the brim when the tide runs at its full, while the space between tidemarks is a chaos of craggy rocks and skerries, and huge scattered boulders. Amid such wild ruin as this, the mind instinctively thinks of some cataclysm or convulsion of nature, some earthquake or outbreak of volcanic fire that

1 R. Stevenson, Account of Erection of Bell-Rock Lighthouse, p. 163. 2 The sea at a distance of 100 yards all round the sunken reef of the Bell Rock has a depth of two or three fathoms at low water.

has shattered the coast and strewn it with its own wreck. And some effort of imagination is needed to realise that the devastation has been caused by the very same agencies that are working it still, and notably by the breakers which, when the north-east gales sweep across the sea, batter against the cliffs with the noise of thunder, and cover them with spray even to the summit. The Forfarshire coast-line is, for the most part, formed of wall-like cliffs of red sandstone, sometimes perforated with curious blow-holes like the 'Geary Pot,' near Arbroath. But here and there, in creeks and bays, there are sandy flats-the records of an older sea margin yet to be described. It is upon these softer parts that the breakers have made most rapid inroads. Thus, in the thirty years which preceded 1816, the road trustees were under the necessity of twice removing inland the roadway that skirts the shore westward from Arbroath, and in that year it had again become imperative to make another removal.1 The loss of land at one point, a short way south-west from the town, had been thirty yards since 1805, while at another spot still nearer the town it had reached in 1865 as much as sixty yards within the same period that is at the rate of fully a yard every year. About the year 1780, a house existed at the latter locality, of which there are now no remains, its place being covered by the tides. At Arbroath itself, a house which stood next to the sea was some years ago washed down, and strong bulwarks are necessary to retard further encroachments. But these prove to be ineffectual barriers, for every severe gale damages them, and the sea is sensibly gaining ground.

The coast, as we proceed northwards, continues to furnish additional instances of the destructive effects of the

1 R. Stevenson, Mem. Wernerian Soc., ii. p. 473.