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CHAPTER XVIII. 

 SOME SOUTHERN CLIFFS. 



PRE-EMINENT for grandeur among all our southern headlands stands 

 the mighty precipice of Beachy Head, and after it I should place Culver 

 Cliff, Freshwater, and the chalk cliff at Swanage. Before I first saw Beachy, 

 it was always connected in my mind with Captain Knox's description of 

 its Peregrines and Guillemots. It was therefore no small disappointment to 

 discover that the Guillemots which used to breed there are extinct. One 

 solitary bird, washed in by the sea one stormy October, and captured by 

 Mr. Edelsten, is the only specimen of which I have any recent record. 



What caused the Guillemots to forsake their ancient nesting-place I 

 have never been able to discover, unless, indeed, the frequent landslips, to 

 which the chalk is subject, have carried away the ledges on which they once 

 deposited their eggs. The state of the cliff to-day is such that the Gulls 

 can barely find sufficient projections for their wants, and there are certainly 

 no long flat platforms such as a colony of Alcidae would require. Myself, 

 I live in hopes that they may yet return, if a convenient landslip will only 

 provide them with a ledge ; and there are rumours that odd pairs are seen 

 at times in the breeding season. 



But, after all, Beachy can afford to overlook the loss of its Guillemots 

 so long as its Peregrines still remain. These glorious birds, despite incessant 

 persecution, still retain possession of their ancestral domain, and no other 

 bird, save perhaps the Eagle, could harmonize more thoroughly with the 

 stupendous grandeur of this noble precipice, as seen from the shore below. 

 I say the shore advisedly, for the view from the top gives no idea of its 

 magnificence. 



In May, 1904, a college boy named Morton asked me to look at three 

 eggs, which he had taken from the Beachy cliffs. They were Peregrine's 

 without a doubt, and, paradoxical as it may seem, he had done the race a 

 real service by annexing them. The nest from which they came in the 

 previous year it had belonged to a Gull was high up just over the edge of 

 the cliff, and when he reached it the Falcon was on the eggs and a gin was 



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