16 JULY 1948, Page 14

COUNTRY LIFE

THOSE who make holiday on the shores of East Anglia ought to follow their visit with a journey to the extreme south-east. They may be depressed by the evidence of erosion from, say, Runton to Yarmouth. Not only does the sea eat away at the clayey cliffs, which incidentally allow few approaches to the beach, but it perpetually threatens to flood the low-lying land. An unfortunate alliance between Aeolus and the moon might, for example, make an island, or an almost-island, of Yarmouth itself. The threat has indeed become so obvious of late that vigorous measures at long last are to be taken to protect the shore, though much more general efforts ought to be made. The sand martins nesting in numbers in the cliffs would agree. However, England does in fact grow rather bigger. If a church has fallen into the sea by Cromer, Romney Marsh sheep may feed on the old bed of the sea. England, of course, might increase her acres as the wise Dutch have increased theirs. The edges of the Wash, which is silting up (like the river at Blakeney), is only less open to reclamation than the Zuider Zee ; and land so reclaimed in the past proves particularly fertile, as soon as the worms can colonise it.