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MISCELLANEA
sea from working on the cliff base. In other words, causing beach materials (shingle, &c.) to collect so that the high-water mark is set back. This result is commonly effected by means of groynes, which both catch and tend to retain the travelling drift.
   Artificial Dumping.—There are many localities where, by means of artificial dumping of shingle, a threatened coast-line may be economically conserved; in fact, there are few spots where a judicious application of this method would fail to result in permanent protection, provided simultaneously a system of groyning were carried out.
   Such dumping has not, however, been resorted to in many instances. At Hove the sea-wall enclosing the Lawns was threatened, immediately after its erection, with destruction by under-scour. The expedient of depositing along the front some of the surplus shingle encroaching on the port of Shoreham was resorted to, with complete success. Similarly, at Newhaven, the low-lying eastern frontage of the harbour was rendered permanently secure by bringing shingle from the west side in railway trucks and tipping it on that foreshore, a scheme of groynage being also carried throughout. All that is really required is at high water to discharge the shingly soil of dredging operations from hopper barges as near the coast-line as practicable. If such works are judiciously carried out, the sea washes up and redistributes the material so dumped to the best advantage as a protection.
   Some ten years ago the condition of the frontages of Lowestoft and Pakefield was desperate, the inroads of the sea being of an alarming character, and expenditure on the fronts an overwhelming burden on the local bodies concerned. Simultaneously a new Herring Basin was constructed at Lowestoft. The dredged material from this basin, which consisted mainly of clean shingle, was taken to sea and deposited in deep water. Had it been brought alongshore and deposited, in all probability the problem of the defence of the wrecked coast-line would have been made good at comparatively small cost. It is in the power to enforce combined operations of this nature that the utility of a central organizing authority becomes self-evident. There