3 MAY 1946, Page 16

COUNTRY LIFE

IT is a melancholy spectacle when good land tumbles into the sea, especially when it takes with it—as some years ago near Cromer—a well- built church ; but East Anglians who see their shores diminishing in size need not worry about the size of England. Actually on balance it grows larger, not smaller. What is lost in slipper clay is gained in shingle— Rye compensates for Runton—and it may increase, too, in silt. There are many acres, just coveted at high tide along the shores of the Wash; and though the silting up of the Wash has some ill effects on the rivers, and has helped to deprive King's Lynn of its use and reputation as a harbour, reclaimed land thereabouts has proved and would prove extremely fertile. The Dutch would doubtless treat parts of the Wash as they have treated the Zuider Zce. It is a cause of congratulation to naturalists that some• of the beaches and spits that have emerged from the sea have encouraged several rare and precious birds; and, apropos of this, how the gulls delight to nest on the raised beaches of some western islands, notably, in my experience, Jura! This gain on balance does not of course lessen the duty to arrest coast erosion, which in some Norfolk districts shows rapid acceleration. The technique of arresting such coast erosion seems to have been insufficiently studied as well as partially practised. '