president’s address. 
336 
and barren soil. The Flora has a beauty and character of 
its own most attractive to the inland botanist. 
The Geologist may note, laid bare, such a mixture of soils 
as is to be found on many a Norfolk farm, varying from the 
stiffest clay through all gradations of sandy or gravelly loam 
to blowing sands or long ridges of shingle, and may find in 
sheltered corners that wind and tide have deposited layers 
of Cockle and Clam Shells, reminding him of the Weybourne 
Crag. 
The maps which I show are done on the scale of eight inches 
to the mile. 
The first belongs to Mr. Bolding Monement (date 1586) ; 
the original is as much a picture as a map, and distances and 
positions are very uncertain ; for instance, the relative positions 
of Cley, Blakeney, and Morston Churches. I have assumed, 
the two latter to be in their right places — from Blakeney 
Church to the mouth of the Stiffkev river is three miles, about 
the distance that the Harbour mouth is now. Blakeney 
Church to the Harbour mouth is here just two miles, showing 
the entrance to be east of the present sandhills, and just west 
of the high sandhill known as Blakeney Hood. The second 
is Grenville Collins’ plan of Blakeney harbour (date 1690). 
Charles II., whose care for his navy was one of his best traits, 
gave instructions that, as no English charts existed and 
Englishmen were, and always had been, dependent on Dutch 
charts, Captain Collins should have the use of a large yacht 
to execute surveys, which, says he, he did in seven years’ hard 
work. This book of surveys was lent me by Mr. Genochio, 
the head officer of the Lynn Custom House. 
This chart gives the low water mark of the beach due north 
of Blakeney Church as 550 yards further seaward than the 
Ordnance Maps of 1890, the sands due north of Morston, 330 
yards further, and the furthest spit of sand as 400 yards 
further. If, as is asserted by Wheeler, in the ‘ Sea Coast,’ 
the rate of encroachment between Cromer and Mundesley 
