50 



Lydden Spout Coast Guard Station. The South-Eastern Railway 

 Company are building a sea-wall, draining the base of the cliff, 

 and erecting groins to intercept the sand and shingle which 

 travel eastward, and are not replaced in quantity from the west, 

 as they were before the seaward extension of the Folkestone 

 breakwater. There was but little frost last winter, but the 

 unusual rainfall of the past autumn and winter will account for 

 that portion of the falls where the cliffs are not attacked by the 

 sea. I have experimentally found many of the beds of chalk, 

 when air dried, take up from i8'4 to 22-75 per cent, of moisture. 



VIII. 

 COAST EROSION, 1897-98. 



BY 



CAPTAIN McDAKIN. 



Since the great fall from Shakespeare's Cliff (reported last 

 year) to the West of Dover, and a small fall near the South 

 Foreland Coast Guard Station to the East of Dover, which took 

 place in the early part of the winter of 1897 — 98, there has been 

 no noticeable change. These cliffs are so lofty (about 350 feet) 

 and in many places perfectly perpendicular, that although the 

 fallen mass may weigh many thousands of tons, the encroach- 

 ment on the land surface does not amount to many feet. 



The South-Eastern Railway Company, for the protection of 

 their line, have erected a concrete sea-wall, extending from 

 about two miles from Lydden Spout Coast Guard Station, east of 

 the Abbott's Cliff tunnel to about a mile from the West end of 

 the same tunnel. This work is supplemented by about twenty 

 groins running at right angles to the wall. These groins are 

 built of railway bars and three-inch deals, all bolted most 

 securely together. Several of these were destroyed by the 

 winter gales, and iron railway bars broken as if they had been 

 laths. 



The object of these groins is to arrest the shingle travelling 

 from the Westward, that it may form a natural apron to the wall, 

 and prevent the foundations from being scoured out by the 

 falling action of the waves. It will be seen from the diagram 

 that this is a very difficult engineering work, as the springs, 

 Avhich are abundant, flow out over the gault clay and are always 



