THE HUMAN SPECIES. 6;> 



GREAT BRITAIN. 



IF we now turn to the British Islands, we find the 

 whole east coast of England marked by devastation 

 and marine encroachment. From Cromer, where the 

 village of Shipden was lost in the reign of King 

 Henry IV., though it is said the ruins are still dis- 

 cernible at very low tides, about half a mile distant 

 fram the shore, and thence by Yarmouth and Harwich 

 to Reculver in the estuary of the Thames, the work of 

 erosion is every where conspicuous, and still proceeding. 

 The soil is evidently older than the alluvial of the 

 German rivers, for debris of Proboscidians, of Saurians, 

 and Tortoises, are not unfrequently found imbedded in 

 it. At Dagenham, in Essex, as mentioned in the Phil. 

 Transactions, the Thames bank wall having given way, 

 the soil washed down, in some places, to twenty feet in 

 depth, when " many large trees became exposed to 

 sight, oaks, alders, and hornbeams, one of which bore 

 ' marks of the axe, and the head was lopped off' " 

 There is no reason for rejecting the tradition concern- 

 ing the Goodwin Sands ; and the disappearance of the 

 island, was a natural consequence of the tides acting 

 upon its low shores, from the time the Straits of Dover 

 were opened, and the calamity, an immediate result 

 of neglecting to defend the banjss by artificial means. 

 The same force which swept away the town of Win- 

 c^elsea, in the reign of Edward I., had long before 

 destroyed the Portus Iccius on the opposite coast, and 



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