88 KENTISH BOTANY. ' [March, 



This is not the case, as the list of cornfield or agrarial weeds or 

 plants will show. Many parts of Kent and Surrey, too, exhibit 

 a much richer stubble Flora than this island. 



The only newly-introduced plant (we mean into books, not 

 into the country) observed in our brief stay here was Lepidium 

 Draba, which had not the slightest appearance of being a recent 

 introduction, for it had probably lived a miserable life on the 

 bare exposed part of the coast, where it was found by us, for 

 hundreds or probably thousands of years. 



The extent of the island has been considerably diminished 

 since the period when the Apostle of Britain, St. Augustine, 

 landed here, and published the good tidings of salvation. At 

 that period, viz. in the sixth century (a. d. 597), as we learii 

 from the ecclesiastical history compiled or composed by the Vene- 

 rable Bede, Thanet contained six hundred families; and accord- 

 ing to the computation of its modern historian, the Rev. John 

 Lewis of Margate, who wrote in the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, it was only half as large as it had been in the seventh 

 century, when Bede wrote. What it gained on the west by the 

 filling up of the ancient channel of the Wantsume it appears 

 to have lost by the constant inroads of the sea on the north and 

 east. Between twenty and thirty miles of coast is exposed to the 

 iricessant attacks of the waves, and to the slow process of disin- 

 tegration by atmospheric influences; the portions thus broken 

 down and carried aw^ay have diminished the area of the island to 

 one-half the extent since the earliest recorded historic period. 



Bui if the surface is less, the population is more than tenfold 

 greater than it was when it was the cradle of the Anglo-Saxon 

 race. The towns of Margate and Ramsgate when full, and they 

 are crowded with visitors " when summer days are fine," contain 

 at least 80,000. Broadstairs, Kingsgate, Pegwell, and the ancient 

 villages of Minster, Monkton, Birchington, St. Nicholas, etc., 

 contain at least 1 0,000 more. During a few months in summer 

 Thanet is swarming with people. 



Then the most important places in the island, or close to it, 

 were Richborough and Recuiver, both strongly fortified. The 

 former city, or tovrn, is quite deserted ; and the latter has, since 

 the removal of the church, dwindled away to a few ruinous cot- 

 tages, occupied by seafaring folks, whose external appearance is 

 not very much superior to that of their humble habitations. 



