Morgan George Watkins

“ Constant rains will frequently wash down the whole face of a cliff. Such catastrophes alter the character of the ground so completely that a stranger would often affirm what is really the work of a night to have sprung from the gradual effects of ages. ”

“ It has acquired such gigantic though airy proportions, that its very bulk is fatal to it. Like “goodness driven to a plethora,” it often “dies of its own too much.” Reasonable men will always be ready to accept a plain in preference to a marvellous cause, in order to account for much that they see around them. ”

“ We returned from our investigation convinced that the natural forces in daily operation on the earth will be found, the more they are studied, to account for far more geological changes than are usually placed to their credit. ”

“ Constantly beating on their base, the waves sap them, and then their own weight brings down the overhanging masses. Again, frost, heat, and rain are great disintegrants: the latter, insinuating itself into chinks, washes out argillaceous or calcareous veins, thus frequently dislocating large masses of rock. ”

“ THE TRANSFORMATIONS OF OUR SOUTHERN COAST.
It is a frequent complaint with geologists, that without travelling there are few opportunities of examining any great convulsions of nature. We have no volcanoes; we lie out of the region of earthquakes; even avalanches and landslips must be sought in Switzerland. ”

“ The upper strata were saturated, and the water, oozing through and finding vent from the “foxmould” in landsprings, undermined the whole tract. So the superincumbent mass slid onwards over the retentive lias into the gulf. Its pressure forced up the reef, which gradually sank into its old form on the momentum ceasing to act upon it. As to the other landslip at Beer described above, it was found that the spring of 1789 had also been unusually wet. Many other authentic cases of such “landslips" (the generic term even when the land sinks) appear to bear out this theory. ”