take place?

[Illustration: THE BEACH IN THE FOREGROUND IS A ROCKY SHELF, THE
REMNANT OF THE CLIFF WHICH ONCE EXTENDED OUT TO THE ISLAND.]


People are rather apt to think of land and water on the earth as if
they were fixed in one changeless form,--as if every continent and
every island were of exactly the same shape and size now that it
always has been and always will be.

Yet nothing can be further from the truth. The earth-crust is a scene
of perpetual change, of perpetual struggle, of perpetual building up,
of perpetual wearing away.

The work may go on slowly, but it does go on. The sea is always
fighting against the land, beating down her cliffs, eating into her
shores, swallowing bit by bit of solid earth; and rain and frost and
inland streams are always busily at work, helping the ocean in her
work of destruction. Year by year and century by century it continues.
Not a country in the world which is bordered by the open sea has
precisely the same coast-line that it had one hundred years ago; not a
land in the world but parts each century with masses of its material,
washed piecemeal away into the ocean.

Is this hard to believe? Look at the crumbling cliffs around old
England's shores. See the effect upon the beach of one night's fierce
storm. Mark the pathway on the cliff, how it seems to have crept so
near the edge that here and there it is scarcely safe to tread; and
very soon, as we know, it will become impassable. Just from a mere