[2530] Report of ... the Brit. Association, 1885 (1886), p. 439. See also pp. 406-7. According to J. B. Redman (Proc. Inst. Civ. Engineers, xi, 1851-2 [1853], p. 164) ‘it appears that at an early period there was no shingle at all at Dover ... which there is historical evidence to prove was the case; its gradual advance from the westward eventually blocked up the entrance’, &c. Where the ‘historical evidence’ is to be found Redman omits to say; and I cannot find it; but it is certain that the movement of shingle along the coast began long before the historic period (Geogr. Journal, xxviii, 1906, p. 489).
Capt. McDakin (Coast Erosion,—Dover Cliffs, p. 5) remarks that ‘the Roman Pharos on the Castle Cliffs and the foundations of a similar building in the Redoubt on the Western Heights, give us no indication that the edge of the cliff has receded since those earliest of Roman buildings occupied their present site’.
[2531] Clement Reid in Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex, i, 25, and Geogr. Journal, xxviii, 1906, pp. 488-9.
[2532] Vict. Hist. of ... Sussex, i, 469.
[2533] See Geogr. Journal, xxviii, 1906, p. 490.
[2534] Ib., p. 489. Cf. A. J. Jukes-Browne, Handbook of Phys. Geol., 1892, p. 171.
[2535] Angusti montes (B. G., iv, 23, § 3).
[2536] See p. 329, supra.
[2537] Experiments recently conducted by Captain McDakin (Coast Erosion,—Dover Cliffs, pp. 3-4, 12) showed that ‘the average erosion of four years was unexpectedly small, only amounting to half an inch in a year’. He admits, indeed, that the average rate, since erosion began, ‘has probably been much more rapid.’ His general conclusions are, ‘that the heaviest falls ... take place after long continued rain.... That the springs issuing from the base of the cliffs play an important part in undermining and bringing down the cliffs; and that the sea charged with a small amount of shingle [which it discharges like a gun] attacks the undercliff and removes it, but where the shingle accumulates in large quantities, it defends and supports the base of the cliffs,’ &c.
[2538] Ed. Wesseling, p. 473. See also Corpus inscr. Lat., vii, 1228.