THE SANDHILLS. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9343, 6 February 1892, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE SANDHILLS. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, —If, as Mr Leslie Reynolds says, I am labouring under a misapprehension of his views on the sandhills, it is a misapprehension, I find, shared by many others besides myself. He certainly says the encroachment of the sea is due to the shifting of the sand from the sandhills in an easterly direction towards Lawyer's Head, and gives as one of the causes that the prevailing wind is south and west; and he does not take into consideration what many peojile who saw what occurred consider as the chief factors in the destruction which has taken place at St. Clair, and which I enumerated in my letter of December 12. Had Mr Reynolds had the facilities others and myself had of watching their effect, he would have seen that the encroachment at St. Clair was caused by a lowering of the level of the beach,- which commenced in the vicinity of the sea wall; and ho would have seen that this lowering was not caused, as he says, by a gradual shifting of the sand eastward, but by local causes, which I have more than once described and called attention to in your columns. For instance, the box drain which on one occasion, in 24- hours, removed tons of sand, cutting a gap many yards long and many feet wide and deep, or the stones of the ruined walls working their way down through the sand, taking with them as- they go the level of the sands surface. I am sure had Mr Reynolds seen and duly considered these matters his report would have been of a different nature, and so would his recommendations as far as remedying the destruction at St. Clair. Referring to what Mr Reynolds says about the winds, it is quite true that taking the year round the prevailing winds are south and west, but it is also true that the chief encroachments of the sea on the sandhills take place when the wind is north and east. Witness August and September 1886 when the sea used to encroach yards at a tide, and I used to stand and watch it.—l am, &c, St. Clair, February 3. RoiiKitr Paumn.