Fig. 2.—Whitecliff (Chalk), Dorset
Where this harder chalk exists the coast is rugged and irregular. Sea birds find a home in the sheltered ledges and in the protected nooks of its serrated edge; and the countless wave-resisting blocks of weathered chalk that have been hurled from the heights above, together with the many remnants of former cliffs that have at last succumbed to the attacks of the boisterous sea, all form abundant shelter for a variety of marine plants and animals.
Fig. 3.—Penlee Point, Cornwall
But it is in the west and south-west of our island that we find both the most furious waves and the rocks that are best able to resist their attacks. Here we are exposed to the full force of the frontal attacks of the Atlantic, and it is here that the dashing breakers seek out the weaker portions of the upturned and contorted strata, eating out deep inlets, and often loosening enormous blocks of the hardest material, hurling them on the rugged beach, where they are eventually to be reduced to small fragments by the continual clashing and grinding action of the smaller masses as they are thrown up by the angry sea. Here it is that we find the most rugged and precipitous cliffs, bordering a more or less wild and desolate country, now broken by a deep and narrow chasm where the resonant roar of the sea ascends to the dizzy heights above, and anon stretching seaward into a rocky headland, whose former greatness is marked by a continuation of fantastic outliers and smaller wave-worn masses of the harder strata. Here, too, we find that the unyielding rocks give a permanent attachment to the red and olive weeds which clothe them, and which provide a home for so many inhabitants of our shallow waters. It is here, also, that we see those picturesque rock pools of all sizes, formed by the removal of the softer material of the rocks, and converted into so many miniature seas by the receding of the tide.
