Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A Devonian headland. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![[Reprinted from Nature jor A ugust, 1894.] A DEVONIAN HEADLAND. EP within the great West Bay of Dorset and Devon lies a headland to which sea-birds have always flocked as to a chosen retreat. The upland down ends in lofty cliff's that run sheer to the water’s edge; and close by, both east and west, clear brooks, which spring from the underlying greensand, have worn out charming little valleys that bear the local name of combes, such as we find, for instance, in Salcombe and Babbicombe. The headland itself bears a Norse name, derived from the hamlet that lies in the eastern valley—it was a little way off, on the shores of the same great bay, that the Norsemen had their first historic conflict with the English—but the hamlet might well bear a similar place-name with its western neighbour, and be called, more appropriately, Chalcombe. The headland used to be, in the breeding season, alive with sea-birds. Prominent among them was the graceful form of the herring-gull, and the snake-like neck of the cormorant and its cousin, the shag. More numerous than these was the scarcely less graceful-winged common gull, and the kind called, from its utterance, like the cuckoo and the Turtle-dove, the kittiwake ; while the sea below was often dotted over with guillemots and razor-bills, known by the fishermen under the local name of mers, a name wherein they preserve, no doubt unknowingly, the excellent title of mergus, or diver. Chalcombe Head was almost entirely appropriated by sea- birds. The cliff's are here lofty, hard, and everywhere well nigh perpendicular : they were thus entirely unclimbable, save only at one perilous gap near the hamlet, where adventurous smugglers, by a terrible path which we may well look down with awe, used to carry up the brandy-kegs, or, as they were called, Uihs—with which, in their open lug-sailboats, with picturesque bark-browned sails, they ran across the Channel, often in dark and boisterous weather, from the French coast at Cherbourg, or, as they called it, Sharebrook. The birds could here breed unmolested. About half-way down the cliff's, kindly Nature seemed to have especially provided for them a fit and secure nesting-place. For there, one of the layers of flints, which run regularly along the upper chalk, had](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22453416_0005.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
