July 28, 1 881] 



NATURE 



287 



leeward of the proposed road quarry at Heme Bay were 

 considered. The Trinity Corporation would be affected in 

 reference to the defences of the Reculvers— the two spires 

 of the ancient church having been maintained by them for 

 many years as sea marks with stone slopes and groynes for 

 the protection of the cliff From the fact of their being to 

 the eastward of Heme Bay they may be said to be to wind- 

 ward of the site, still the hastening of the recession at 

 Heme Bay, which has from natural causes alone increased 

 in a marked degree of late, would tend to increase the 

 projection and consequent exposure at the Reculvers. 



Next we have the entire landowning interest of the Isle 

 of Sheppy affected by this Canterbury decision, for its 

 northern seaboard retreats at a rapid rate, evidenced by 

 the recent removal of Warden Church, which had been 

 left on the extreme verge of the cliff, due to the extensive 

 slips in the London clay to the westward, which must of 

 course be aggravated if the natural barrier formed by the 

 sea at the base of the clifl' is weakened by cutting off the 

 supply coming from the eastward, tending always in its 

 normal state to travel onwards to increase Garrison Point 

 at Sheerness at the outfall of the Medway. 



Lastly we have the whole Mile Town and Sheerness 

 frontages affected, where the Government have erected 

 from time to time sea-walls and groynes for the collection 

 of this very beach that the Canterbury magistrates covet 

 for the repairs of their roads. Nor is Sheerness alone 

 affected, but the Queenborough district also, as was 

 evidenced in the great tide of February, 1791, when the 

 whole of the marsh forming the north-west promontory of 

 the Isle of Sheppy was under water, and great loss and 

 damage sustained. 



Canvey Island, on the opposite Essex shore, suffered in 

 a similar manner at the same time. 



For some years past this practice of removing littoral 

 gravel has been stopped on the Kentish southern coast 

 since Mr. Redman reported for the War Office on the 

 condition of the beaches at Sandown, Deal, Walmer, 

 Dover, Eastbourne, &c., who strongly urged the suicidal 

 nature of the practice, since which the Government and 

 local authorities have had notice-boards planted along 

 the beach imperatively forbidding the removal of shingle. 



This general Iccicard movement of shore detritus, due 

 to the prevailing wind w.aves, has been of late years so 

 clearly demonstrated by the authorities cited, and accepted 

 generally by marine engineers, that it appears strange to 

 find editorial articles for months in a magazine of wide 

 circulation dealing with engineering science which re- 

 suscitate the old and exploded theories on the question 

 which are to be found in early geological works, and these 

 articles, if not accepted, have at least remained hitherto 

 apparently unchallenged. 



We would sum up this perhaps somewhat lengthy review 

 of a topic, of no mean importance however, having reference 

 to our insular position, by saying that the passage of the 

 heavier particles (the shingle) of a marine mound or 

 natural mole is due universally to the action of the waves, 

 although attributed by many early geological writers to 

 the ocean currents — and its influence on the tidal harbours 

 of our shores, is very important. 



The masses of shingle are heaped up coincident in 

 direction with the waves which sort the material in 

 regular gradation ; an alternate renewal and withdrawal, 

 due to change of wind, produces a resultant leeward 

 motion due to the wind the particular coast is most 

 exposed to, and the largest pebbles in all these marine 

 alluvion are universally accumulated on the summit, and 

 to leeward of the prevailing winds, due to their greater 

 momentum and to their being less influenced by the 

 recoil wave, compared with sand and the smaller stones. 



At the last meeting of the South-Eastern Railway 

 Company we find the chairman (Sir E. W. Watkin, M.P.) 

 stating in reference to the proposed Lydd Railway and 

 the line to Dungeness, that it not only would secure in the 



future the shortest route to the Continent, but that it also 

 gave them access to an important bed of shingle, from 

 the sale of which they anticipated great benefit ! and that 

 they saw their way to do a large trade in its conveyance. 

 It was important for road-making, railway-ballasting, and 

 concrete foundations and walls. 



This is the not over scrupulous view of the chai:-man of 

 a leading railway company of one of the most important 

 natural breakwaters on the south-eastern coast, and the 

 uses to which it may be apphed as a quarry for the benefit 

 of his company. 



The great land-slip which left Warden Church on the 

 verge of the cliff, causing its ultimate recent removal, 

 occurred in September, 1859, and this had been preceded 

 by a similar great fall to the westward about the year 

 1856, that of 1859 being in effect a prolongation or exten- 

 sion of the earlier one towards the eastern end of the 

 island. The falls are the result of a gradual subsidence 

 occupying some hours, due to the thorough saturation of 

 the London clay by land drainage down several small 

 chines, and the effect of atmosphere and weather on the 

 face of the cliffs and their degradation at the base by the 

 sea during spring-tides. In effect a broad belt of land 

 moves seaward (not a mere abrasion or undermining of 

 the cliff alone), settles vertically downwards, or spreads 

 out, and slides seawards, presenting a new cliff landward 

 at the last parallel fissure, the moving mass attaining a 

 state of rest in the shape of an under-cliff, with a series of 

 parallel terraces rising and falling in the valley of the fall, 

 with the turf and vegetation undisturbed ; and the fore- 

 shore and bhingle are ploughed up by the fall, forming a 

 kind of "moraine " at the base. After a fall the ordinary 

 waste goes on at an average rate of one yard per annum. 

 Some of the trees near the church had settled down 

 bodily on the prisms of earth to which they were attached, 

 some fifty feet lower in level than when they were in 

 situ, showing how gradual and vertical had been the 

 subsidence. 



The question arises, To what extent are'the cliffs in the 

 Tertiary formations saturated or affected by percolation 

 through fissures from the sea, and how far this may be the 

 first cause .' There are no appearances of land springs 

 from the cliff face. The whole appears to have squeezed 

 down into a saturated or partly fluid base. The rapid 

 degradation of the Sheppy chffs was pointed out in an 

 article in the St. James's Gazette of May 23, and the 

 absence of any attempts to arrest it. But this constan 

 loss has been eloquently described by Lyell in his great 

 work, " The Principles of Geology," affording as it does a 

 constant supply to the fluctuating foreshores of the River 

 Thames carried up by the superior power of the flood 

 compared with its ebb tide, and brought down again by 

 the prolonged duration of the ebb, aided by upland waters 

 in steps downwards. 



SCIENCE AT ETON 



ALTHOL'GH Eton still ranks as a purely classical 

 school, and has not established a modern side as 

 her rival Harrow has done, yet the study of science is 

 pursued within her walls to an extent which — in some 

 respects at least — is unequalled at any other school. 

 The numbers of the school vary somewhat on each side 

 of 900 boys, about 120 of whom, constituting the Fourth 

 Form, do no science. About serenty boys more from the 

 Fifth Form make up the Army Class, and do no Science 

 unless they take in Physical Geography and Geology for 

 their final examination. But in the Remove and in the 

 greater part of the Fifth Form, which constitutes the chief 

 mass of the school, two lessons a week in science enter into 

 the regular work of each division. 



At the present time the Head-Master has twenty-two 

 Classical Assistants, and the Lower Master two. There 

 are nine Mathematical Masters, and four for science, two 



