THE HIGH TIDE OF NOVEMBER 29, 1897.
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It is worth while again calling attention to section 4 of the Wild
Bird Act, 1896, providing that when any person is convicted of
an offence against this Act, or the Principal Act, the Court may,
in addition to any penalty, order any trap, net, snare or decoy-
bird, used by such persons for taking any wild bird, to be
forfeited. Hitherto, there had been no statutory justification
for seizing the implements of offenders, when caught flagrante
delicto.
THE HIGH TIDE OF NOVEMBER 29th, 1897.
" The old sea wall (he cried) is downe,
The rising tide comes on apace,
And boats adrift in yonder towne,
Go sailing up the market place ! "
From Jean Ingelow's ballad " The High Tide
on the coast of Lincolnshire, 1571."
NOVEMBER and December last were rendered memorable
in weather annals by gales and high tides which did much
damage on the East and South Coasts. Although perhaps not
exceptionally severe, by occurring co-incidently with a spring
flood-tide, the Gale of Sunday, November 28th, produced most
remarkable and disastrous effects in Essex.
Between noon and 4 p.m. on the Sunday, Mr. G. J.
Symons, F.R.S., recorded a fall of the barometer in London of
0.30 in., but this rate of fall he remarks (in his Monthly Meteoro-
logical Magazine) was " by no means unprecedented and we have
known the wind much stronger .... In the centre, E.,
and N. of England, the gale was much heavier, many chimneys
and a few partly-built premises, trees, and telegraph posts were
blown down ; but the damage was not comparable with that of
the storms of March 24th, 1895, and March 3rd, 1897. Over
the North Sea and south-westwards, as far as Boulogne, the
wind force was, no doubt, great, but the chief source of mischief
was due to the intensity of the storm occurring at nearly the
time of high-water spring tide. Hence the eastern coasts, on
both sides of the mouth of the Thames, suffered severely, build-
ings being wrecked or flooded at Southwold, Ipswich, Harwich,
Ramsgate, Margate, Herne Bay, Whitstable, Sheerness, South-
end, Purfleet, Woolwich, and other places."
In Essex great damage was done by the gale at Colchester,
Halstead, Coggeshall, Chelmsford, Ingatestone, Dunmow,
Ongar, and many other places, but it was by the floods and