a steady progress, as it does, from, west to
east.

In the midst of these doubts and contradictions,
it is positively asserted by others,
that the shingles do not travel below one
fathom under low-water mark.  For instance,
few travelling beach-stones ever manage to
creep round a groyne—or projection, run
out into the sea—the outer end of which is
maintained in six feet depth of water, at all
times of the tide. Now and then, indeed, a
few straggling stones may be found to have
passed such a point, but, for the mass, their
roaming propensities are checked by this
simple contrivance. Neither do beach-stones
travel along indeep water, under the face of
a vertical cliff; and, at fifty yards only from
the steep beach off the pitch of Dungeness,
the head-quarters of travelled beach-stones,
an anchor armed with a scoop brings up
nothing but mud.

Not wishing to complicate matters, we
at once admit these to be facts, and that
they would seem to prove that shingle
objects to travel in deep water, and that its
course can be arrested whenever we please.
But we had better proceed cautiously, for
no conjuror is up to more artful tricks, than
your travelled beach-stone. He is most expert
at playing at hide and seek. Even Colonel
Pasley, while operating upon the hull of
the Royal George, at Spithead, did not come
to any positive opinion upon the matter. He
found, indeed, that the tide acted as
powerfully at the bottom as at the top; and,
moreover, that it usually turned a little earlier
below, than it did above (a fact, we believe,
not known before), but that he thought it
was incapable of moving the shingle, or any
rounded object at the bottom of Spithead.
"There may be," he continued, "narrow
straits and passages where the scouring of
the tide might remove shingle and other
rounded objects, but no such cases have as
yet been proved."

Now, if the tide has no influence upon
the shingle, and if it does not travel below one
fathom under low-water mark, what becomes
of the millions of tons of pebbles, which, after
forming a moveable covering for scores
of miles upon our southern beaches,
mysteriously dwindle away at various places,
leaving the shore covered with sand?  So abrupt
is the disappearance of beach-stones, that
the place of their exit is almost universally
called "Sand-down," or "Shingle-end;" for,
where the shingle ends, the sand begins. If
it does not withdraw itself into deep water,
and reappear again on some other shore,
what becomes of it? It is diflicult to suppose
that its travels end at these places. Although
there is an onward flow of myriads of tons,
yet the shingles never appear to advance
beyond these well-known limits.

The shingle movement is more lively on
some shores than on others. It is very brisk in
the neighbourhood of Dungeness; where a
mighty mass of live beach is marching
triumphantly into the sea. The rate at which the
shingle grows seaward here, can be calculated
with tolerable accuracy by means of the
lighthouse. The earliest known building upon
this spot was raised in sixteen hundred and
three, at one hundred yards from the end of
the Ness. In seventeen hundred and
ninety-three it was seven hundred yards from
inland—if we may so call this mass of pebbles.
Of course the lighthouse had become worse
than useless, for it acted as a decoy, and was
the cause of many wrecks. It was pulled
down in seventeen hundred and ninety-three,
and again built within a hundred yards of
the then extremity of the growing mass.
Thus, in one hundred and ninety years, the
Ness had advanced six hundred yards into
deep water at a rate of seven foot ten inches
per annum. From actual survey made by
Her Majesty's ship Blazer, in eighteen hundred
and forty-four, this new lighthouse was two
hundred and twenty-one yards from low-water
mark; consequently the Ness had again
advanced up to that period one hundred and
twenty-one yards, or at the rate of about
seven feet four inches per annum. Now
the distance from the lighthouse to the sea,
is becoming so great, that the necessity of
shifting it again is quite evident, as ships
running up channel are liable to be misled
by it, for, of course, a lighthouse should be
placed where the danger begins.

Another important accumulation of
beach-stones is at Portland, where the
shingle movement is very curious. This place
is very frequently visited as a natural wonder,
and, perhaps it is the most singular collection
of beach-stones on our shores. Let us
suppose a mass of rounded pebbles,
composed of jasper, chert, limestone, and
other substances partaking of the character
of the rocks and cliffs of part of Devon and
Cornwall. We will not stop to inquire by what
means these stones travelled scores of miles
along these shores, and ultimately rolled
themselves up into a thin strip about seventeen
miles long, a quarter of a mile broad, and about
six feet deep, and so loose that a horse's leg
sinks to the knee at every step. This
arrangement is curious enough, but by some
process the stones are made to diminish in
dimensions from west to east, as though nature
had sorted them into parcels according to their
size. At Portland, for instance, they are of the size
of swans' eggs, further on they diminish to hens'
eggs; then to pigeons' then to the size of
horse-beans; then they dwindle down to peas,
and, ultimately, they pass through all the gradations
of small shot, and finally vanish into mere dusty
specks of blown sand.

An attempt has been made to explain how
this diminishing process is brought about.
It seems that the largest pebbles are always
found to leeward, and this is accounted for
by their being more easily moved by seas