Note (return) — Chapter I · (continued 3)

But it is not every where upon the coast that those materials are equally delivered; neither is it every where along the shore that the currents of the ocean are equally perceived, or operate with equal power in moving bodies along the shelving bottom of the sea. Hence in some places deep water is found washing rocky coasts, where the waste of land is only to be perceived from what is visibly wanting in the continuity of those hard and solid bodies. In other places, again, the land appears to grow and to encroach upon the space which had been occupied by the sea; for here the materials of the land are so accumulated on the coast, that the bottom of the sea is filled up, and dry land is formed in the bafon of the sea, from those materials which the rivers had brought down upon the shore.12