422 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



shingle almost at every tide. To-day, at any rate, 

 we can see clearly where the freshly washed stones 

 have been swept over the bank and laid on the dusty 

 heap that seldom knows the washing of a tide. And 

 a little to the east can be seen very plainly the place 

 whence this daily present to the railway company 

 comes. 



It is possible that the inhabitants, except they be 

 landowners, fail to follow the slow process by which 

 the coast-line is daily changed. We remember very 

 well what this place was like seven years ago. Then, 

 three great banks of shingle sloped steeply down to 

 the sea, the whole forming a mound apparently twenty 

 feet high. Now, when the tide is out, a flat table of 

 rock apparently slopes the other way, standing a foot 

 or so out of the waves and coming down under the 

 foot of the cliff, which to-day the tide gnaws at when 

 it is up. It is difficult not to believe that the land 

 here has sunk bodily, letting the waves fly at the 

 throat of the cliffs instead of at their knees. Of 

 course, it may have done so, though the removal of 

 the shingle towards the west by a newly directed 

 scour of the tides can be found a sufficient explana- 

 tion. It must be related, however, that the father 

 of the farmer who now has the crumbling cliffs used 

 to graze his sheep on a substantial strip of grass 

 beneath the cliffs acres that are now far under the 

 waves. The inference seems clear that just here 

 England is taking one more of those slow dips in 

 the sea of which in the ages she has taken so many. 



When the Royal Commission on Coast Erosion 

 issues its report we shall get something like a general 

 view of the robberies and the gifts of the sea. Most 



