can cause shingle to accumulate before your threatened town or
homestead, you know you can make the place safe and secure from the
waves. But if you stop this flow of shingle you may protect your own
homes, but you deprive your neighbours of this safeguard against the
ravages of the sea. It was so at Deal. The good folks of Deal placed
groynes in order to stop the flow of shingle and protect the town.
They did their duty well; they stopped the shingle and made a good
bulwark against the sea. With what result? In a few years' time they
caused the destruction of Sandown, which had been deprived of its
natural protection. Mr. W. Whitaker, F.R.S., who has walked along the
whole coast from Norfolk to Cornwall, besides visiting other parts of
our English shore, and whose contributions to the Report of the Royal
Commission on Coast Erosion are so valuable, remembers when a boy the
Castle of Sandown, which dated from the time of Henry VIII. It was
then in a sound condition and was inhabited. Now it is destroyed, and
the batteries farther north have gone too. The same thing is going on
at Dover. The Admiralty Pier causes the accumulation of shingle on its
west side, and prevents it from following its natural course in a
north-easterly direction. Hence the base of the cliffs on the other
side of the pier and harbour is left bare and unprotected; this aids
erosion, and not unfrequently do we hear of the fall of the chalk
cliffs.

Isolated schemes for the prevention of coast erosion are of little
avail. They can do no good, and only increase the waste and
destruction of land in neighbouring shores. Stringent laws should be
passed to prevent the taking away of shingle from protecting beaches,
and to prohibit the ploughing of land near the edge of cliffs, which
greatly assists atmospheric destructive action from above. The State
has recently threatened the abandonment of the coastguard service.