Volume 183501

Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation / [Sir Charles Lyell].

  • Lyell, Charles, Sir, 1797-1875
Date:
1835
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Principles of geology, being an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation / [Sir Charles Lyell]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    463/468 (page 419)
    i ee a Ch.VL] LIONNESSE TRADITION IN CORNWALL. 419 Tradition of loss of land in Cornwall. — The oldest of the submersion of the Lionnesse, a country which formerly stretched from the Land’s End to the Scilly Islands. ‘The tract, if it existed, must have been thirty miles in length, and perhaps ten in breadth. The land now remaining on either side is from two hundred to three hundred feet high; the intervening sea about three hundred feet deep. Although there is no evidence for this romantic tale, it probably origin- ated in some catastrophe occasioned by former inroads of the Atlantic upon this exposed coast.* West coast of England. — Having now laid before the reader an ample body of proofs of the destructive operations of tides and currents on our eastern and southern shores, it will be unnecessary to enter into details of changes on the western coast, for they present merely a repetition of the same phenomena, and in general on an inferior scale. On the borders of the estuary of the Severn the flats of Somerset- shire and Gloucestershire have received enormous accessions, while, on the other hand, submarine forests on the coast of Cheshire and Lancashire indi- cate the overflowing of alluvial tracts. Since the year 1764, the coast of Cheshire between the rivers Mersey and Dee has lost many hundred yards, and some affirm more than half a mile, by the advance of the sea upon abrupt cliffs of red clay and marls. Within the period above mentioned several light-houses have been successively abandoned.+ There are tra- * Boase, Trans. Royal Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, vol. ii. p. 130. + Stevenson, Jameson’s Ed. new Phil. Journ, No. 8. p. 386.