CHAPTER III
The Foreshore
  According to the Office of Woods the United Kingdom possesses a total frontage of coast foreshore at high-water line of 7906 miles; the total area between high-water and low-water mark is 619,999 acres. On the same authority the total length of river frontage at high-water line is 11,081 miles; the acreage between high-water and low-water mark of rivers is 175,722 acres.
   The Director-General of Ordnance Survey (Colonel R. C. Hellard, R.E.) stated in evidence before the Coast Erosion Commission that in thirty-three years (between 1863 and 1896), so far as the official surveys enabled him to ascertain, there had been in England an accretion of land of 35,444 acres, an erosion of 4692 acres, or a net gain of about 30,750 acres of rateable land.
   A definition of the term “coast foreshore” is not easy. It is synonymous with the word “seashore”. In legal documents the littus mciris is defined as “ that ground between the ordinary high-water and low-water mark”. Otherwise stated, the shore “ is confined to the flux and reflux of the sea at ordinary tides”. The ambiguity of the above definitions has been the cause of endless litigation. It is obvious that the term “ordinary tides” is capable of several definitions. The highest equinoctial spring tides occur in the natural order of things, and are in this sense “ ordinary”.
   From the evidence of the Director-General, it would appear that there has been a lack of continuity of method in the mapping of the coast-line of Great Britain below high-water level. After the legal limits of the foreshore were defined by
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