Knowledge. 



With which is incorporated Hardwicke's Science Gossip, and the Illustrated Scientific News. 



A Monthly Record of Science. 



Conducted bv Wilfred Mark Webb, F.L.S., and E. S. Grew, M.A. 



JANUARY, 1913. 



THE SHINGLE BEACH. 



By E. S. GREW, M.A. 



Alike in Europe on its north-western and western 

 shores, and in the United States along the eastern 

 coast of North America, as well as along the 

 coast of Peru, the wandering sand-dune has been an 

 object of systematic and continuous study. The 

 shingle beach, as Professor F. W. Oliver, F.R.S. 

 has recently pointed 

 out in The New 

 Phytologist, has re- 

 ceived, on the other 

 hand, comparatively 

 little attention, pro- 

 bably because in the 

 countries where atten- 

 tion to the sand-dune 

 has been an economic 

 necessity, the shingle 

 beach is of compara- 

 tively small import- 

 ance. But in Great 

 Britain the shingle 

 beach is not unimportant. It is part of the drift of 

 our coasts, and as such plays a very important role as 

 a defence against the wastage of the shore-line — a 

 point which has been emphasised in the recent 

 Report on Coast Erosion. The extent of the 

 British shingle beaches is hardly realised, though 

 few holiday-makers at the seaside will have found 

 themselves at any distancefrom some shingledrift,and 

 there are actually some three hundred miles of the 

 coast of England and Wales lined by shingle. Even 

 the most casual observation of these deposits reveals 

 that they are not entirely stationary, and that their 



FIGURE 1. Sketch Map of the Blakeney Bank, showing systems of 

 hooks at A, B and C. 1, 2 and 3 denote areas of marshes in the 

 order in which they were reclaimed. The arrow above the letter S 

 in " salt," indicates the position of the bank whose tip was turned 

 at a right angle in 1911. 



presence must influence the hinterland where they 

 occur, if only to the extent of protecting golf links 

 from the surrounding sea, as at Felixstowe, or of 

 threatening them with curtailment as at Westward 

 Ho ! To the geologist and botanist they offer many 

 interesting problems, both in respect of their own 



increase of material, 

 and in the vegetation 

 for which they afford 

 either protection or a 

 difficult foothold. 



Professor Oliver's 

 interest in shingle 

 beaches is chiefly 

 botanical, and in its 

 direction is analogous 

 to the inquiries which 

 have been pursued by 

 him and by the stu- 

 dents of University 

 College, for a number 

 of years past in Western France. At Erquy, in 

 Brittany, an area of salt-marsh was selected some 

 seven years ago, and on this area has been noted the 

 distribution of zones of vegetation ; the physical 

 characters of the soil, its salinity, and the plants 

 appropriate to such conditions ; the migration of 

 the plants, and so on. A large number of problems 

 have arisen out of this field of study : and some 

 of them are repeated in different aspects in the 

 neighbourhood of the shingle beach. But in order 

 to define them, it is necessary to comprehend first 

 the methods of formation of the beach ; and to this 



