Sea cliffs seldom overhang, but commonly, as in Figure 134, slope seaward, showing that the upper portion has retreated at a more rapid rate than has the base.  Which do you infer is on the whole the more destructive agent, weathering or the wave?

Draw a section of a sea cliff cut in well jointed rocks whose joints dip toward the land.  Draw a diagram of a sea cliff where the joints dip toward the sea.

Sea caves.  The wave does not merely batter the face of the cliff.  Like a skillful quarryman it inserts wedges in all natural fissures, such as joints, and uses explosive forces.  As a wave flaps against a crevice it compresses the air within with the sudden stroke; as it falls back the air as suddenly expands.  On lighthouses heavily barred doors have been burst outward by the explosive force of the air within, as it was released from pressure when a partial vacuum was formed by the refluence of the wave.  Where a crevice is filled with water the entire force of the blow of the wave is transmitted by hydraulic pressure to the sides of the fissure.  Thus storm waves little by little pry and suck the rock loose, and in this way, and by the blows which they strike with the stones of the beach, they quarry out about a joint, or wherever the rock may be weak, a recess known as a sea cave, provided that the rock above is coherent enough to form a roof.  Otherwise an open chasm results.

BLOWHOLES and sea arches.  As a sea cave is drilled back into the rock, it may encounter a joint or crevice opened to the surface by percolating water.  The shock of the waves soon enlarges this to a blowhole, which one may find on the breezy upland, perhaps a hundred yards and more back from the cliff’s edge.  In quiet weather the blowhole is a deep well; in storm it plays a fountain as the waves drive through the long tunnel below and spout their spray high in air in successive jets.  As the roof of the cave thus breaks down in the rear, there may remain in front for a while a sea arch, similar to the natural bridges of land caverns.

Stacks and wave-cut islands.  As the sea drives its tunnels and open drifts into the cliff, it breaks through behind the intervening portions and leaves them isolated as stacks, much as monuments are detached from inland escarpments by the weather; and as the sea cliff retreats, these remnant masses may be left behind as rocky islets.  Thus the rock bench is often set with stacks, islets in all stages of destruction, and sunken reefs, all wrecks of the land testifying to its retreat before the incessant attack of the waves.

Coves.  Where zones of soft or closely jointed rock outcrop along a shore, or where minor water courses conic down to the sea and aid in erosion, the shore is worn back in curved reentrants called coves; while the more resistant rocks on either hand are left projecting as headlands (Fig. 139).  After coves are cut back a short distance by the waves, the headlands come to protect them, as with breakwaters, and prevent their indefinite retreat.  The shore takes a curve of equilibrium, along which the hard rock of the exposed headland and the weak rock of the protected cove wear back at an equal rate.