206 NA TURE NOTES. 
chough that figures in this passage from Lear, written of a 
neighbouring cliff ; — 
“ The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, 
Show scarce so gross as beetles ; half-way down 
Hangs one that gathers samphire ; dreadful trade ! 
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. 
The murmuring surge 
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes, 
Cannot be heard so high.” 
In the corvus tribe, the best of poets are sometimes indis- 
criminating or inexact, as, for example, Tennyson, who, though 
one of the best of poets about birds, writes of “ the many wintered 
crow that leads the clanging roohry home.” Thus the jackdaw is 
probably the bird called chough in the fine old glee that tells us 
that ” the chough and crow to roost have gone.” 
As we recall these things we can see growing all around us 
in luxuriance, at the foot of these cliffs, the samphire that 
Shakespere’s Edgar saw one gathering, as a dreadful trade, half 
way down. And as we sit about or move about here, we may 
well satisfy ourselves, by careful observation of the tides, that 
it was past this very bay that the great Caesar passed with his 
ships on that August afternoon just 2050 years ago, when he 
tells us that, after lying at anchor till the tide turned — as we see 
sailing vessels and French fishing boats having to do now — he 
sailed with the tide to find a suitable landing place clear of the 
cliffs where from missiles might, he saw, be readily thrown by 
the waiting Britons upon his troops below. And we may, at 
ease, walk b}" the very cliff route along which marched the 
watchful British troops with their war chariots, following the 
Roman legions as they sailed past. With pretty fair certainty 
we may feel that we have come to the very beach where the 
mighty Julius beached his boats and ships and attempted to 
land, whereupon the Britons marched into the sea, with cavalry 
and war-chariots, and seemed to have the Romans entirely at 
their mercy. In such a new kind of conflict, fighting at every 
disadvantage, the all-conquering legionaries might well show 
some hesitation in jumping overboard till, after calling upon the 
Gods to favour his attempt, the standard-bearer of the famous 
tenth legion sprang with his eagle into the sea, calling out with 
a loud voice these ever-memorable words: — “ Desilite, com- 
militones, nisi vultis aquilam hostibus prodere : ego certe meum 
reipublicae atque imperatori officium praestitero.” With Caesar’s 
Commentaries in hand, we may call up there the scene of the 
first recorded battle ever fought on our shores ; and we can well 
imagine that it was a very close and sharp fight (Caesar says it 
•was “ piig 7 iatum acriter”), and though, with their famous short 
two-edged swords, the well-disciplined veterans triumphed, it was 
only after a very sharp struggle ; so that we feel that our 
ancestors were nowise disgraced. The next year, as we know^ 
Caesar came earlier in the year with 800 ships, and a mightier 
