to pieces! But the separate flints or nodules in the body of the chalk
strata are not so: which led the late Sir H. Englefield to conjecture,
that the phenomenon was caused in the moment of the immense concussion
which subverted the whole mass of strata, and placed them in their
present nearly vertical position.

Another interesting circumstance in the geological structure of the Isle
of Wight, is a series of strata, _vertical_ or highly inclined, which
run across the middle of it from east to west; while the strata on each
side are _horizontal_; they consist of ... a very thick stratum of clay
and sand (observable at Alum Bay), flinty chalk, chalk without flints,
chalk-marle, green sandstone with lime-stone and chert, dark-grey marle,
and ferruginous sand.

A PROGRESSIVE CHANGE is evidently taking place in the boundary line of
the coast--the sea making considerable invasions on the south side,
which is exposed to the resistless currents of the ocean; while on the
north it is found to be more gradually receding, from the accumulation
of sand and shingle drifted and deposited by the less impetuous tides of
the Solent Channel.--About Brixton, for instance, between Blackgang
Chine and the Freshwater Cliffs, the loss of land has been estimated
(from the successive removals of paths and hedges,) to exceed 200 feet
in breadth in less than a century; while in the neighbourhood of Ryde it
is known that the bed of a valley formerly accessible to the sea is now
rather above its highest level; and even in 1760, when Fielding visited
the island, the coast there is described by him as a wide disgusting
waste of mud, which is now covered with an increasing layer of sand,
sufficiently firm to bear wheel-carriages; and no doubt but in process
of time there will be a great accession to the beach, from the constant
though slow operation of the same causes--denuding on the one side, and