the particular districts, made the lecture an 

 exceedingly interesting one. Starting from 

 Craigendoran on the Clyde, he described the 

 scenery in threading the Kyles of Bute, and then 

 spoke of Oban, the wild pass of Glencoe, Loch 

 Lomond, and the charming Loch Katrine, now, 

 unfortunately, suffering somewhat at the hands 

 of the engineers who are cai-rying out a scheme 

 for supplying water to Glasgow. Some typical 

 scenes of the Western Highlands, the land of 

 mountain, moor and loch, rock, water and glen, 

 were next shown. It w;is pointed out that the 

 tourist was sure to experience bad weather during 

 some part of his holiday, and due allowance 

 should be made for this in his plans. It was 



probably an experience of th is kind the 

 lecturer humorously remarked, which once 

 caused an angry tourist to enquire of 

 a native if it always rained there. "Xo, no," 

 replied Sandy, '* it sometimes sna^vs." Those 

 visiting Scotlan<l were wann:?d by the lecturer 

 against attempting too much. The best way was 

 to walk from place ti:) place, staying a few days in 

 each, and exploring the surrounding country. 



The President expressed their appreciation of the 

 lecture., and 



A vote of thanks was accorded to Mr. Leeming, 

 and to Mr. Lander for the able injinner in which 

 he manipnlated the lantern. 



COASTAL CHANGES IN KENT AND SUSSEX.— By Kkv. L. H. KVANS, M.A. 



An exceedingly interesting lecture on " Coastal 

 Changes in Kent- and Sufsex" was given by the 

 Rev. L. H. Evans, of the King's School, before the 

 members of the Society at their meeting in the 

 Beaney Institute, Canterbury, on Wednesday, 

 January 25. 



The lecturer — who was briefly introduced by 

 Dr. Graham Wills, the President of the Society — 

 said he proposed to limit the scope of his remarks, 

 so far as detailed discussion went, to the stretch 

 of [coast-line from Fairlight promontory to the 

 South Foreland. He then exhibited charts of the 

 district at different periods, and remarked that it 

 would be readily seen that the redistribution of 

 land and water that had taken place in the last 

 oOO years presupposed some special and local 

 reasons to account for it. Broadly speaking, all 

 alterations of coast-line were the result of two 

 processes, sometimes working separately, some- 

 times together. The first was the upheaval or 

 depression of the land, owing to some kind of 

 movement in the earth's crust. The second, which 

 was swifter in its action but less exten.sive in its 

 effect, was the formation of new land by alluvial 

 river deposit or by detritus can-ied in by tidal 

 action. In the Romney Marsh proper, it was 

 entirely marine. By marine, he meant merely the 

 detritus of cliff and shore brought in by the sea, 

 which in that district had been both large in 

 amount and fertile. Making a general survey of 

 the coast - line from Fairlight promontory, 

 the lecturer said that there was not a 

 single inlet or harbour from Pett End 

 to Dover that had not been either entirely or 

 partially blocked by masses of sliingle and sand. 

 Walking along the beach till almost opposite the 

 present town of Winchelsea they would find the 

 remains of stone jetties and docks half buried in 

 shingle, close to the old and now deserted coast- 

 guard cottages. That was the memorial of a 

 hopeless attempt to construct a new harbour for 

 Rye by making an outlet for the river there from 

 the right angle formed by th© Brede. Eastward, 

 in a straight line, they came to the little hamlet 

 glorified by the name of Rye Harbour, and as 

 imlike a harbour as anything could well be. There 



were no dot-ks worthy of the name, but the b jats 

 that came up on the tide lay there in a kind of 

 widening of the stream. Twice had the Kother 

 been denied its outlet, partly by natural, partly 

 by human agency, and now it had joined forces 

 with the Brede and Tiliingham and still endea- 

 voured to pose as a navigable river and be of 

 service to man, who had been its worst enemy. At 

 the harbour of New Romney the Kother found its 

 second outlet, thanks to the builders of the Ehee 

 Wall, and in spite of the short-sighted policy of 

 the Canterbury monks who *'inned" the mai'shes 

 on the west of that embankment. The Roman 

 harbour Portus Lemanus, which lay, according to 

 some, near the foot of Lympne, suffered the same 

 fate as the rest and shipping was unable to pass 

 further up this estuary than West Hythe, being 

 finally driven further eastward to Hythe Haven. 

 This, in its turn, was choked up, as was the har- 

 bour of Folkestone and also the harbour of Dover, 

 which lay some way up the Charlton valley, but 

 was stopped up by shingle on which the lower 

 part of the present town of Dover was actually 

 built. Rounding the South Foreland they found 

 a similar state of things, with the exception that 

 shingle was for the most part replaced by sand. 

 Walraer and Deal had both suffered in times past, 

 while the great water-way of the Wantsume had 

 b^en completely and rapidly blocked at its eastern 

 end. Nothing could show more strikingly th© 

 irresistible power of this ever-driving sand than 

 the course of the River Stour as marked on the 

 map. The Roman fort at Kichborough comman- 

 ding the eastern end of the Channel 

 (as Reeulvers commanded the northern) 

 must have fallen a prey to the sand not long 

 after the departiu-e of the Romans and its place 

 was taken by Sandwich. There the Stom- entered 

 the sea, but was driven northwards by the con- 

 tinuous pressure imtil at last it struggled out into 

 comparative freedom in Pegwell Bay. The facts 

 summed up amounted to this, that an almost 

 continuous barrier of shingle had l>een built along 

 the coast from Fairlight to Folkestone, choking 

 np all harboiu-s and inlets, and repeating the 

 process at Dover, while on the east coast of 



