51 



sapping the base of the cliffs, together with the sea wall. There 

 is now comparatively very little shingle on the coast from 

 Folkestone to the East of St. Margaret's, except in the angle 

 formed by the Admiralty pier with the coast at Dover. That is 

 of course on the West side. 



The great gale on the 24th and 25th March, produced but 

 little effect on this part of the coast, the wind having been off- 

 shore, but, as before observed, an off-shore wind piles the shingle 

 on the beach, an on-shore wind carrying the shingle into deep 

 water. 



NOTES. 



In August, i8g8, a fine specimen of a whale was cast ashore 

 at St. Nicholas Bay, near white post hole, in the Isle of Thanet. 

 It was reported by Mr. G. R. Burden, of St. Nicholas-at-Wade, 

 to be a male specimen of the Greenland whale, 42^ feet in 

 length, and measured 13 feet from the tip of his nose to his 

 forehead, and about 30 feet in circumference, and 8 feet across 

 the tail. It was in a very advanced state of decomposition, and 

 gave no end of trouble to those that tried to remove it, it having 

 been purchased by a INIr. Osmond. That gentleman was 

 required by the Sanitary Authorities to remove it, but this being 

 no easy matter it was attempted to set fire to it on the spot, but 

 this also failed. The District Council were in a fix what to do 

 with this " white elephant " ; it was even suggested to blow up the 

 animal with gunpowder or dynamite. Eventually, however, it 

 was cut up, and the skeleton, I believe, taken to London for 

 a museum. I think there is some question about the species 

 of whale it belonged to. — G.D. 



At Ramsgate a mammoth tooth was met with in making 

 some excavations near the gas works, under some rather 

 exceptional circumstances, viz., that it was buried so deep in 

 what appeared to be pure undisturbed chalk as to lead some to 

 suppose it belonged to that formation, and the specimen was 

 brought to my observation as to this question. It appears that 

 it had been washed down a deep valley that runs, or empties 

 itself, into the sea by the harbour from the higher grounds 

 beyond the water works, and that it was covered with pure 



