INTRODUCTION XVll. 



Not SO many years ago large flocks of Oxbirds and 

 Godwits were to be seen above Rochester Bridge feeding 

 on the mud banks at low water, bat now the Medway is 

 given np to the cement maker, and there is no longer 

 room for the Oxbird. On the southern side of the Swale 

 the London clay is found in patches large and small as 

 far as Faversham, where it swells out and covers a large 

 tract of country. From Faversham to the fieculvers, 

 and on the south by way of the Blean Woods to Canter- 

 bury, and over the valley of the Stour to Sandwich, 

 all this low-lying country, thinly inhabited, intersected 

 by ditches and the winding Stour, is still frequented by 

 many birds, especially about the mouth of the Stour. 

 The boom of the Bittern might perhaps have been heard 

 there again this year, as it is reported that two of them 

 have been shot there quite lately. The Sandwich Flats 

 are a favourite resort of Curlews, Plovers and Sandpipers. 

 This masf? of London clay Hes over the chalk, but the 

 chalk crops up again in the Isle of Thanet and extends 

 the chalk cliffs along the shore from Ramsgate to the 

 Reculvers. These white walls of old England afford 

 nesting places for a variety of birds, Jackdaws and 

 Starlings especially delighting in them ; a few pairs of 

 Guillemots may be met with round the South Foreland, 

 and on the Dover cliffs and St. Margaret's Bay two or 

 three pairs of Peregrines are said to breed yearly, though 

 more often than not it is to be feared their nests are 

 robbed. 



The Romney Marsh is a district apart, separated 

 from the rest of the county by the Military Canal, and 

 is altogether diverse in its character and appearance ; it 

 is ten njiles wide from north to south and half as much 

 again from west to east, and is a very low-lying region, 



B 



