BLAKENEY POINT IN 1913. 
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Cambridge, Kew, Bedford College, etc. As a rule, a consider- 
able party, numbering from 14 to 20, has resided on the Point 
for a fortnight in July, whilst smaller parties have come in 
August, September, January, etc., for longer or shorter periods. 
In addition to these, several week-end visits of inspection are 
paid in which students of the Department can be included. As 
Headquarters for the social life of these parties the commodious 
old Lifeboat house has been secured and thoroughly overhauled, 
whilst tents and the huts on the Point provide sleeping accom- 
modation. 
The Nature of the Work. 
The “general idea” of the proposed enquiry was to investigate 
the relations of the plant and animal populations to their 
environment, both physical and organic. In the case of the 
vegetation this involved more especially the habitat or topo- 
graphical relations of the plants — their relations to dune sand, 
to the mud and saline moisture of the salt marshes, and to 
shingle. 
On first arrival it was necessary to take stock of these 
populations — of their distribution in relation to that of the soils. 
Consequently from 1910 — 1912 mapping was a conspicuous 
occupation. General maps of the area from the western ex- 
tremity of the Headland to the beach opposite Cley were 
constructed on the scale ot 25 inches to the mile (l in 2500), on 
which it was possible to represent all the principal assemblages 
or “associations” of plants — the vegetation zones on the salt 
marshes and shingle beaches, the lows, the younger and older 
dune systems, etc. 
With the progress of the mapping, evidence soon began to 
accumulate of the celerity of change both in the physical 
construction of Blakeney Point and in the distribution of 
particular species of plants. It is no exaggeration to say that 
the ground of Blakeney Point is so mobile under the play of 
the elements that change, often involving important topographi- 
cal features, can almost always be detected by anyone familiar 
after an interval of a few months. This shewed that the 
