SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



129 



THANET SANDS. 



By Geo. Barham. 



T T was with great interest that I read Mr. 

 Martin's notes {ante p. 54) entitled " Thanet 

 Sands," in the neighbourhood of Heme Bay and 

 Reculvers, as I was for some few years resident 

 in that district, and rather closely studied its 

 historical and geological features. The latter 

 portion of his notes is the part to which I wish to 

 refer ; as I am very much afraid that his theory of 

 the rising of the land is untenable. Neither do I 

 quite see how, if accepted, it explains any of the 

 difficulties presenting themselves to the student. 

 Take for example Bishopstone Dell ; as near as I 

 can recollect, this runs back for even less than a 

 quarter of a mile inland ; and the depth of the 

 gully is fairly estimated at fifty feet. It runs down 

 to the beach or sea-level. If the land had risen 

 from that level one foot, two feet, or fifty feet, 

 how would it have aided the cutting out of this 

 declivity ? Such a process must have been gradual, 

 and its effect would simply have been to convert 

 the tiny stream into a small waterfall on the old 

 sea coast, and consequently start a cutting-back of 

 the soil as is noticed at Niagara. It is fairly 

 proved that the land has, just there, been " eaten " 

 by the sea ; so that by this time all traces of our 

 waterfall would have vanished and the position 

 with regard to the big gradient of fifty feet in a 

 quarter of a mile would be the same. No, during 

 our investigation there, so far from imagining a 

 rise, I and my father have been, at times, com- 

 pelled to theorize about a sinking of the land in 

 the patch of country bounded by the river and sea 

 from Faversham to Birchington, and for an average 

 of five to six miles inland. Yet your correspondent, 

 by travelling up to Whitstable, and looking at the 

 marshes, and watching the sea coast at low tide off 

 Graveney, might well be e.xcused for building up 

 his theory. Land only two or three inches at most 

 above sea level, strong sea walls to keep out the 

 tides — resembling those on the coast of Holland — 

 tide going out from two to three miles, according to 

 the wind, may well combine together to almost 

 force one into belief in the rising-land idea. 



The closing up of the estuary of the Swale 

 could be easily made to occur by simply allowing 

 nature to take her course, and without altering 

 the level of the county in the least, by simply 

 removing the " jetties " or timber baulks running 

 down the beach from land to sea, which man has 

 placed at every few yards along the coast from 

 Whitstable to Beltinge. The two big rivers, Thames 

 and Medway, flow into the sea near here, and 

 the tiny little Swale comes southward round the 



Isle of Sheppey. The back eddy or wash of these 

 first-named rivers, aided by the setting of the tide 

 from the German Ocean, forces the waters every 

 tide up to the Swale, carrying with them shingle, 

 sand and ocean refuse of every description, which 

 is left in the sea bottom, between Shellness and 

 Harty Ferry, on the Isle of Sheppey, and 

 Whitstable on the main coast. Reculvers and 

 Heme Bay being at the mouth of this swirling 

 eddy, are robbed every tide of sand and clay, 

 which is carried westward, assisting in the silting 

 up of the Swale. 



Owing to this carrying of debris and the 

 existence of the small, practically unimportant 

 Swale, a possibly unique thing has happened, 

 which causes the local geologists — who are almost 

 all " land-risers " — to triumphantly smile at the 

 folly of us who cannot see as they do. I allude to 

 Whitstable "Street." This is a narrow belt of 

 shingle, mud gravel and refuse running for from 

 three to five miles into the sea, and almost 

 bare at low water. At its extreme end, enormous 

 quantities of Roman pottery are found — of 

 which, I may add in parenthesis, the finest 

 collection in England belongs to my father, and 

 the next to Liverpool Museum — in various states 

 of preservation. This " Street " they say is a 

 gradual rising of the sea bottom, because it is 

 growing wider and more shallow in historical 

 times. It is not, in the sense they mean, neither is 

 it the "remains" of a tongue of land stretching 

 into the sea, although it is beyond doubt that even 

 in Roman times the coast -line was four or five 

 miles farther out. It is merely a very quiet, 

 business-like, easy-going "bar," caused by the 

 current from the little Swale meeting the afore- 

 mentioned tides. So far from the land having risen, 

 it has, if anything, gradually sunk. That it has 

 actually sunk in places I have direct proof, but as I 

 am not writing a geology of North-east Kent, I will 

 not trespass on your space so far as to dilate upon 

 that. Let Mr. Martin go to the coast between 

 Whitstable (Swalccliffe) and Hampton, and see a 

 tiny little stream there, running a few miles inland, 

 and measure the old river-bed that he will find 

 there, having an average depth of twelve feet and 

 a width of nearly a quarter of a mile. If he does, 

 and also searches in that river-drift, wherein he 

 will find many quaint and curious things, he will 

 probably find a more simple explanation of the 

 peculiar Bishopstone Dell than the land-rising 

 theory. 



9, Riiskin Street \pttiiighaiii. 



