MAKING ENGLAND BIGGER

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 29, 29 October 1919, Page 7

MAKING ENGLAND BIGGER

It is proposed to add to the inhabitable, or, at any rate, usable, aim of England some IHX) acres of tho foreshore of "the Tees. Little by little, by reclamation such as this, England grows steadily bigger (wrilcs "R.H.8." in tho "Daily Mail"), lie re and there , she loses by coast erosion, but elsewhere 6lie; gains more, and the balance throughout tile years is to the good. It is not wholly due to the labours of man that this is so. Nature gives him a good: load bv holding the scales with just a I little bias towards increase. If slw breaks down the cliffs at Dover and Brighton and throws them into the sea, she adds liberally enough each year to Dungcacss. where England juts ever farther and farther out into the ,Channel. Dung6ness is n natural groyne about which gathers the shingte brought, by the scour of tide and storm. Shingle is the best piolo>l ion we have against the hungry sea; nothing serves better to blunt its teeth. And this great mass of shinglo at Dmigeness makes Roniney Marsh, won from the waters ages back, more and more secure each year. Against Roniney Harsh wq nuist set'off tho drowned land of the Goodwins, lost eight or nine hundred years ago. At Lowestoft one may see loss and gain sido by side. At the south end of the town, at Pagefiold, the sea 'lias eaten into the cliff, bringing down streets and houses on to the beach. At the other end the sea lias drawn back from tho cliff, leaving a long stretch of rough land at its foot. ( There laro place-names in Norfolk which begin with Wal. These mark a one-time sea-wall on the south side of' tho Wash. But the shore is now soma distance away, for the Wash grows steadily smaller as the land around it is reclaimed. A big scheme of rcchunaUon is at present afoot on the Lincolnshire . Ll Mucli land has beer, won from the. estuarv of the Dee in comparatively recent times. Strangely enough soma of; this land, though il seems to be on the: English side of the river, belongs to Flint instead of to Cheshire Ilus is explained bv the fact tli"t Ihe channel of the Dee is a new channel,anil ; that the boundary between England and: Wales follows an old channel which no l lonsev exists. , , , , Here and there our coasts liavo ailvimecd so far as to capture outlying is-: lands. One such,, island, : lies stranded lilfo a great \(.)i!|lo just; south of Weston-super-Mare. . I'ho Somerset fens have crept out to it, and,; reaching it, have made it a peninsula, j ■ So partly by our own endeavours and i partly bv Jfa'luro herself, new laud bj added to'our oountry each year. |