238 HISTORY OF 



along the coasts of Norfolk, I am very well as- 

 sured, that, in the memory of man, the sea has 

 gained fifty yards in some places, and has lost as 

 much in others. 



Thus numerous, therefore, are the instances of 

 new lands having been produced from the sea, 

 which, as we see, is brought about two different 

 ways : first, by the waters raising banks of sand 

 and mud where their sediment is deposited j and, 

 secondly, by their relinquishing the shore entirely, 

 and leaving it unoccupied to the industry of man. 



But as the sea has been thus known to recede 

 from some lands, so has it, by fatal experience, 

 been found to encroach upon others ; and proba- 

 bly these depredations on one part of the shore, 

 may account for their dereliction from another ; 

 for the current which rested upon some certain 

 bank, having got an egress in some other place, 

 it no longer presses upon its former bed, but 

 pours all its stream into the new entrance, so 

 that every inundation of the sea may be attended 

 with some correspondent dereliction of another 

 shore. 



However this be, we have numerous histories 

 of the sea's inundations, and its burying whole 

 provinces in its bosom. Many countries that 

 have been thus destroyed bear melancholy wit- 

 ness to the truth of history ; and shew the tops 

 of their houses, and the spires of their steeples, 

 still standing at the bottom of the water. One of 

 the most considerable inundations we have in 

 history, is that which happened in the reign of 

 Henry I. which overflowed the estates of the earl 



