sequence of
lateral movements, the tract intervening between the new fissure and the
sea, including the ancient undercliff, was fractured, and the whole line
of sea-cliff carried bodily forwards for many yards. "A remarkable
pyramidal crag, F, off Culverhole Point, which lately formed a
distinguishing landmark, has sunk from a height of about seventy to
twenty feet, and the main cliff, E, before more than fifty feet distant
from this insulated crag, is now brought almost close to it. This motion
of the sea-cliff has produced a farther effect, which may rank among the
most striking phenomena of this catastrophe. The lateral pressure of the
descending rocks has urged the neighboring strata, extending beneath the
shingle of the shore, by their state of unnatural condensation, to burst
upwards in a line parallel to the coast--thus an elevated ridge, G, more
than a mile in length, and rising more than forty feet, covered by a
confused assemblage of broken strata, and immense blocks of rock,
invested with sea-weed and corallines, and scattered over with shells
and star-fish, and other productions of the deep, forms an extended reef
in front of the present range of cliffs."[432]

A full account of this remarkable landslip, with a plan, sections, and
many fine illustrative drawings, was published by Messrs. Conybeare and
Buckland,[433] from one of which the annexed cut has been reduced, fig.
37.

[Illustration: Fig. 37.

View of the Axmouth landslip from Great Bindon, looking westward to the
Sidmouth hills, and estuary of the Exe. From an original drawing by Mrs.
Buckland.]

_Cornwall._--Near Penzance, in Cornwall, there is a projecting tongue of
land, called the "Green," formed of granitic sand, from which more than
thirty acres of pasture land have been gradually swept away, in the
course of the last two or three centuries.[434] It is also said that St.
Michael's Mount, now an insular rock, was formerly situated in a wood,
several miles from the sea; and its old Cornish name (Caraclowse in
Cowse) signifies, according to Carew, the Hoar Rock in the wood.[435]
Between the Mount and Newlyn there is seen under the sand, black
vegetable mould, full of hazel-nuts, and the branches, leaves, roots,
and trunks of forest-trees, all of indigenous species. This stratum has
been traced seaward as far as the ebb permits, and many proofs of a
submerged vegetable accumulation, with stumps of trees in the position
in which they grew, hav