XXX11 INTRODUCTION. 



hard weather, even young Sea-Eagles are seen on the 

 high grounds at Beeston and Sherringham. Upon the 

 the common-lands, also, which form a portion of the 

 Beeston Hills, the Norfolk Plover (OEdicnemus crepitans), 

 still bred until very recently. 



Between Lower Sherringham and the western 

 extremity of the cliffs, at Weybourne "Hope," the 

 shore assumes a very different aspect. Immense beds 

 of shingle gradually usurp the place of the sands, till 

 at Weybourne and Salthouse large rounded pebbles,* 

 massed together to a considerable depth and covering 

 the whole surface of the beach, rise in long terraces 

 from the water's edge, and form a natural breakwater. 

 At Weybourne, taking advantage of the extreme depth 

 of water close in-shore, the International Telegraph 

 Company have connected their wires with a cable, laid 

 direct from the beach to the opposite coast of Holland, 

 and vessels of considerable size can here run close 

 in with safety. Beyond the beach is a wide tract of 

 marshes, still subject to partial inundations during 

 high tides, and a small "lagoon" or backwater thickly 

 covered, in part, with a coarse vegetation. At this spot 

 there are no shore-breeding birds, but at Salthouse, 

 where the pebbles again become smaller, the Lesser 

 Tern (Sterna minuta) and the Ringed-Plover are found 

 nesting on the shingle, though from the wanton destruc- 

 tion of these birds, and a constant system of egging, 

 their numbers are gradually but surely decreasing. 



* Mr. Pengelly, in his geological lectures delivered in Norwich 

 in 1862, thus alluded to the extraordinary deposit of flints on 

 "Weybourne beach, all rounded and polished by the action of the 

 waves : " Every flint proclaims trumpet-tongued the work which 

 it has taken innumerable ages to perform, in the destruction of 

 vast beds of chalk, from which these flints have been liberated. 

 How many ages, too, must it have taken to polish these flints so 

 beautifully." < 



