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 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK from twenty to two hundred and fifty feet, their composition is clay, sand, and chalk boulders, and their extent some twenty miles.* Near the extreme north-west corner of the county the chalk crops out, forming a bold range of cliffs of no great extent facing the west, and once the breeding-place of the peregrine falcon, but at present only the resort of numberless swifts, sand martins and sparrows ; these, and the smaller passerine birds, nesting in the rough herbage and gorse bushes which maintain a hold wherever possible in the clay cliffs, are the only present inhabitants. 3rd. The ' Meal ' district (from the Anglo-Saxon meel ; Ice- landic mot) is a wild tract of sandy hillocks with miles of salt-marshes, intersected by tidal creeks and rivers, lying between the shore and the cultivated lands. These hills of blown sand, held to- gether by the ' marram ' grass, extend all along the coast from Wey- bourne to Old Hunstanton with very little intermission ; thence the marshes, but in a more advanced stage of reclamation, extend nearly to the town of Lynn, with occasional shingle beaches and extensive tidal sands. The ' Meals ' abound with rabbits, and offer great attraction to the larger raptorial migrants ; they form nesting-places for the stock- dove, wheatear, and many other birds, and in places are visited in sum- mer by colonies of terns, ring-dotterels, redshanks, and a few oyster- catchers and sheld-ducks. I mentioned earlier two localities which were worthy of special description owing to the interest attaching to them, arising from the number of rare migrants which have been there obtained. The first of these was Breydon, already disposed of; the second is Blakeney Point, which forms a part of the section now under consideration. On the north coast, about midway between Weybourne and Wells, the little river Glaven approaches its outlet into the sea ; just before reaching the town of Cley it is closed by a sluice and from that point is tidal, forming the harbour of the ancient and once important port of Cley-next-the-Sea. Thence the channel of the Glaven runs across the salt-marshes in a northerly direction to within about five hundred feet of the sea, when it is stopped by a huge raised bank of shingle, and its course is deflected sharp to the west with a slight trend inland ; nearly two miles from this point it is joined by the channel which runs up to the town of Blakeney, and then the united waters, after flowing some- thing more than another mile, finally sweep round to the north again and enter the sea. The trend of the coast is in a north-westerly direction, the tract therefore lying between the river Glaven and the sea forms almost an island, its only connection with the mainland being the narrow shingle bank at the eastern extremity already mentioned. This isolated portion of the coast extends, from east to west, about three and a half miles, and its greatest width is nearly one mile, its form being something like that of a ' Prince Rupert's Drop,' the pointed end towards the east. The sea boundary for the greater part of its length is a huge raised bank of 222
 * The coast-line of Norfolk extends to about 1 00 miles.