fair town and noble forest that now lie beneath
the seas, and the crumbling cliffs on our eastern shore threaten to
destroy many a village church and smiling pasture. Fishermen tell you
that when storms rage and the waves swell they have heard the bells
chiming in the towers long covered by the seas, and nigh the
picturesque village of Bosham we were told of a stretch of sea that
was called the Park. This as late as the days of Henry VIII was a
favourite royal hunting forest, wherein stags and fawns and does
disported themselves; now fish are the only prey that can be slain
therein.

The Royal Commission on coast erosion relieves our minds somewhat by
assuring us that although the sea gains upon the land in many places,
the land gains upon the sea in others, and that the loss and gain are
more or less balanced. As a matter of area this is true. Most of the
land that has been rescued from the pitiless sea is below high-water
mark, and is protected by artificial banks. This work of reclaiming
land can, of course, only be accomplished in sheltered places, for
example, in the great flat bordering the Wash, which flat is formed by
the deposit of the rivers of the Fenland, and the seaward face of this
region is gradually being pushed forward by the careful processes of
enclosure. You can see the various old sea walls which have been
constructed from Roman times onward. Some accretions of land have
occurred where the sea piles up masses of shingle, unless foolish
people cart away the shingle in such quantities that the waves again
assert themselves. Sometimes sand silts up as at Southport in
Lancashire, where there is the second longest pier in England, a mile
in length, from the end of which it is said that on a clear day with a
powerful telescope you may perchance see the sea, that a distinguished
traveller accustomed to the deserts of Sahara once found it, and that
the name Southport is altogether a misnomer, as it is in the north and
there is no port at all.

But however much as an Englishman I might rejoice that the actual area
of "our tight little island," which after all is not very tight,
should not be diminishing, it would be a poor consolation to me, if I
possessed land and houses on the coast of Norfolk which were fast
slipping into the sea, to know that in the Fenland industrious farmers
were adding to their acres. And day by day, year by year, this
destruction is going on, and the gradual melting away of land. T