Encroachments of the Sea

The eastward progress of the sea on the Danish and Netherlandish coast, and on certain shores of the Atlantic, depends so much on local geological structure, on the force and direction of tidal and other marine currents, on the volume and rapidity of coast rivers, on the contingencies of the weather and on other varying circumstances, that no general rate can he assigned to it.

At Agger, near the western end of the Liimfjord, in Jutland, the coast was washed away, between the years 1815 and 1839, at the rate of more than eighteen feet a year. The advance of the sea appears to have been something less rapid for a century before; but from 1840 to 1857, it gained upon the land no less than thirty feet a year. At other points of the shore of Jutland, the loss is smaller, but the sea is encroaching generally upon the whole line of the coast.