H.M.S. ----

When Homer launched his epic on the literary sea, The critics were as merciful as they can ever be: We take it that the author did the best that he can do, And the book should be remembered for at least a year or two.... But Homer let the critics go, and listened with a smile, For he had heard a verdict that was better by a mile, In a code that only Homer as a husband understood,— You are a funny clever thing—I'd no idea you could.


It is perhaps unnecessary for me to state the objects and purpose of my journey of last week, as it would be false modesty in me not to recognise the great interest taken by the geologic and antiquarian worlds in my proposed enterprise. For the benefit, however, of those for whose intelligence the so-called Popular geologic works are compiled, I will recapitulate some points which are ancient history to my instructed readers.
The winter of 1922 witnessed the greatest geologic change in the earth's surface since the last of the Glacial epochs. Into the causes and general results of this change I do not propose to enter, beyond mentioning my opinion that the theory propounded by Professor Middleton (a theory designed only for one purpose—that of attempting to throw doubt on the data and reasoning of my first monograph on the subject) is not only childish, but based on a fallacy.
I will confine myself to the results as they affected this country and the continent of Europe, of which it is now a prolongation or headland—not, as the Daily Press erroneously labels it, a peninsula.
The total change in elevation of the land is now calculated at 490 feet 7 inches, but more accurate measurements are still being taken. This great change brings us back to a geologic age when man and mammoth co-existed in the primeval forest of Cromer, and when the Dogger Bank was a great plain where wild beasts roamed and palæolithic man left the traces of his industry in the bones and shaped flints which we hope soon to collect in quantities from the mud and ooze with which thousands of years of sea-action has covered them.