NO GREAT MODERN SUBSIDENCE.

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one in suggesting the bare possibility that they belong to a rising mass of land, receiving its species by migration across water. The number of species is so very large in all departments, and in all the islands, that the separation from the main land is not only certain, but must have been an event recent in the ordinary geological sense of that expression.

The very remarkable state of the land and sea bottom in the open gulf or bay in which are the rocks and islands we have been describing, coupled with some apparent historical evidence, the value of which will be considered in another chapter, has, however, induced a suspicion among many persons, both English and French, that an important depression of European land in the neighbourhood of the Channel Islands, took place so recently as about the end of the eighth century; and again, others less considerable, at many subsequent times, amounting in all to as much as 150 feet.*

At present, then, it must be sufficient to state in general language, that the zoology and botany of the island, as far as they are known, do not support such a view. The islands have no doubt been detached from France, recently enough in one sense, but not in the historic sense. Nor does it seem probable, that since the introduction of the prevailing species any of the islands have existed at a very different level, whether higher or lower, from that they now have.

While on the one hand there is no biological or historical evidence of this great depression, or of the recent separation of the islands from the main land, or from each other, so, on the other hand, is there no geological evidence of recent subsidence.

*This view is adopted by M. de Quatrefages in the book already referred to, and is evidently favoured by other writers, although no tangible arguments are brought forward. A gentleman residing in Jersey is about to publish evidence to the same purport, which he considers sufficient to justify the conclusion which is here controverted, and which will be noticed somewhat more fully in a subsequent chapter on the archeology of the islands.

But there is evidence, and that of the strongest kind, everywhere exhibited, of the extremely rapid and powerful destroying action of the sea, which here exercises its influence under peculiarly favourable circumstances.

Nowhere on our shores is the tidal wave so powerful, nowhere are the storm waves so frequent; nowhere is there a coast consisting of material in which so much rock of extreme hardness is penetrated so thoroughly with veins of softer material. The very hardness of the granite, where it is hard, produces an unusual destruction of the softer veins; for, as already explained, every fragment removed becomes a hammer, helping to undermine what is left. Whenever one hard mass is thrown down and broken up another is soon attacked, and thus a perpetual and rapid destruction is caused, increasing constantly in area, and not diminishing in intensity.

It must not hence be concluded that there is no evidence of other disturbance than marine action in these islands. No doubt both the raised beaches and depressed peat beds point clearly to local disturbances of elevation, amounting certainly to as much as thirty feet in both directions. That these have been very partial, and that the raised beaches are among the most modern of the two, is however more than probable; while it is certain that neither of them are traceably connected with larger subsidences, such as are assumed by those who explain the separation of the islands from France, and from each other, in this way.

END OF PART THE SECOND.

CHAPTER XIII.

HISTORY.-PAGAN AND LEGENDARY PERIOD.

NOTWITHSTANDING their smallness, islands may be invested with notable and definite characteristics. They may exhibit much which is peculiar. They may be the exponents of as decided a nationality as is to be found in a great kingdom. Nevertheless, as far as their influence on the world at large is concerned, islands of the third or fourth magnitude are of an essentially subordinate character.

Yet it does not follow from this that they are below notice. On the contrary, not to mention the interest with which they are invested in the eyes of the natives themselves, they are often illustrative of important details which are better studied on a small scale than a large one. This is especially the case when they are connected with archæological enquiries, and it is the case when there is any notable contrast between the geographical or ethnological relations of a given district and its poli

tical ones.

That both these conditions meet in the history of the Channel Islands, is clear. In the full face of all the contrasts, real or supposed, which exist between England and France, the Channel Islands are attached to the latter country in language, to the former in their political history. That they are Norman rather than French, in the stricter and more definite meaning of the term, is true; but, in ordinary language, what is Normandy but