"English Coastal Evolution." By E M.

Ward (Methuen, 6s. 8d net).

Reviewed by A. W. Lewis, the Consulting Engineer of the Institution.

COASTAL changes concern the Institution in its work, and the two main factors, erosion and accretion, are familiar foes.

For example, at Rosslare Point the Life- boat Station has to be protected against erosion by sea walls, stone banks and groynes, while the Hoylake Life-boat has to be taken out to sea by a motor tractor across the wide sands of the Wirral Coast. It is on this account that we give a short review of Mr. E. M.

Ward's book, " English Coastal Evolution." The title is an imposing one, and not altogether happy. We should have preferred a humbler one, such as " How our Coast got its Features," which, not being among the Just So Stories, is legitimately available. The book does not claim to be a treatise dealing systematically with coastal evolution from " the beginning of years when the world was so new and all." Its story starts some three or four thousand years ago when the last changes in the relative levels of land and sea around our coasts are thought to have ceased, and, pro- pounding no new theories, the author seeks to show how well the old ones will account for the changing features of the coast.

The " General Considerations " of the first two chapters will be familiar to the readers of the Final Report of the. Royal Commission on Coast Erosion, and may be found in books already published.

The particular examples of erosion and accretion in the next ten chapters are a useful collection of scattered records, and welcome to the geologist and engineer for handy reference. In the last chapter, however, Mr. Ward strikes, we think, a new note in dealing both with the effect upon the coast of human activities, and also the effect upon man of coastal changes.

The efforts of man to alter coastal conditions to his liking are, Mr. Ward points out, " predisposed towards ultimate failure." This predisposition, however, will not, we think, deter man's efforts. The ultimate is too far off, and meanwhile protection in many places is a crying necessity. Necessity, more- over, is the mother of invention, and posterity may well devise other means of protection than sea walls and groynes.

Even recently, as the author mentions, we have heard of a novel American device in the " Compressed Air " break- water, consisting of bubbles of com- pressed air rising from a submarine perforated pipe and forming a barrier within which ships may ride in tranquil water. Although this particular invention may prove of no practical use owing to its prohibitive cost, still it is a portent against the preachers of " all is vanity." We commend the book to readers of the Journal on the coast, to whom it should be of peculiar interest.

"Ships of the Royal Navy." By Oscar Parkes Sampson Low, 6s. net

This book, admirably illustrated to show the various types of men-of-war from the Majestic class up to the latest Battleship and Battle-cruiser, is designed, as its author explains in his foreword, to meet the requirements not only of the technical reader, but of those we trust not a dwindling band who take an interest in what, pace Sir Percy Scott, still remains our First Line of Defence.

The names of ships of each, class are shown against a photograph of a typical vessel of that class, and this illustrates very vividly the interesting nomenclature adopted by the Admiralty. How many of us, for instance, are aware that the Navy boasts such names as Aphis, Ceanothus, Ladybird, Lychnis, Marazion, Palinurua, Platypus, Scarab, and Vortigern ? May the day be far distant when the Practical Joke Department of the Admiralty has cause to adopt the name of H.M.S. Ichabod for one of H.M. ships ! A handy and useful guide to the ships of the Royal Navy..