182 THE EROSION OF THE COAST. 



coast line is north-east and south-west, and the prevailing wind 

 south-west. The most important winds in raising high waves, 

 piling up shingle, and causing shingle to travel are the south and 

 south-east. He fails to give answers to questions six and seven 

 referring to tidal currents and the range of the tides, and passes on 

 to question eight, which he answers by stating that the area 

 covered l>y the tide is chiefly shingle, with peaty alluvium exposed 

 Ijy the mouth of a stream south of Jordan Hill. The tendency of 

 the shingle is, he states, to travel south-eastward and inland, the 

 road that borders the shingle having been put back 60 feet during 

 the last 30 years. The amount of shingle is diminishing, although 

 the carting of it away is no longer permitted. The groynes which 

 were erected to prevent the travelling of the shingle were wasted 

 away in 1883. Since then blocks of Portland stone have been 

 placed along the shore to protect the coast. The waste of the cliffs 

 of Oxford clay below Jordan Hill he attributed more to atmos- 

 pheric than marine agency, and points out that after a long dry 

 season great cracks and fissures are made in the clay ; then 

 autumnal rains or winter rains and frost act with great destructive 

 powers. To question 15 "Is the bareness of shingle at any of 

 these places due to artificial causes?" he gives no answer. As 

 regards the gain of land recovered from the sea, he points out 

 the probability of the shingle beach having dammed up an old 

 tidal estuary, now the alluvium of Lodmoor, and that further 

 south the chief part of Melcombe Regis is built on marine 

 sand and shingle, which has contracted the mouth of the river 

 Wey, and left a kind of Broad known as Radipole Lake or 

 the Backwater. The water in this is now artificially retained at 

 low tide by a weir. 



This report so limited in scope is nevertheless somewhat meagre 

 with reference to what it professes to describe, and is, moreover, in 

 some respects inaccurate. Strangely enough it omits all mention 

 of the disturbance of old conditions caused by the building of the 

 Portland Breakwater, to which are undoubtedly to be ascribed the 

 denudation of the Preston beach, the tilling up of "VVeyuiouth Bay 



