Later youth is characterized by a large accumulation of shore waste. The rock bench has been cut back so that it now furnishes a good roadway for shore drift. The stream of alongshore drift grows larger and larger, filling the heads of the smaller bays with beaches, building spits and hooks, and tying islands with sand bars to the mainland. It bridges the larger bays with bay bars, while their length is being reduced as their inclosing promontories are cut back by the waves. Thus there comes to be a straight, continuous, and easy road, no longer interrupted by headlands and bays, for the transportation of waste alongshore. The Baltic coast of Germany is in this stage.
Fig. 147. Portion of the Northwest Coast of France
All this while streams have been busy filling with delta deposits the bays into which they empty. By these steps a coast gradually advances to maturity, the stage when the irregularities due to depression have been effaced, when outlying islands formed by subsidence have been planed away, and when the shore line has been driven back behind the former bay heads. The sea now attacks the land most effectively along a continuous and fairly straight line of cliffs. Although the first effect of wave wear was to increase the irregularities of the shore, it sooner or later rectifies it, making it simple and smooth. The northwest coast of France is often cited as an example of a coast which has reached this stage of development ([Fig. 147]).
In the old age of coasts the rock bench is cut back so far that the waves can no longer exert their full effect upon the shore. Their energy is dissipated in moving shore drift hither and thither and in abrading the bench when they drag bottom upon it. Little by little the bench is deepened by tidal currents and the drag of waves; but this process is so slow that meanwhile the sea cliffs melt down under the weather, and the bench becomes a broad shoal where waves and tides gradually work over the waste from the land to greater fineness and sweep it out to sea.
Fig. 148. The South Shore of Martha’s Vineyard
The land is shaded. To what class of coasts does this belong? What stage has it reached, and by what process? What changes will take place in the future?