MAN ASD NATURE. 307 



habitation in many of our streams, as is testified by 

 local names and other records a more skilful archi- 

 tect probably than the human builders on their banks. 

 The barren heaths, of which portions are still left, then 

 circled widely around the metropolis, dangerous to the 

 traveller even within a century of our own day. Sea- 

 marshes and fens spread to great length upon the 

 Eastern coast, and far into the interior of the country. 

 A part of the scanty rental of these fenny districts was 

 paid in eels. They abounded in cranes, bitterns, &c., 

 which disappeared but a short time before the present 

 generation. When that freespoken monarch Henry 

 VIII. described Lincolnshire as c the most brute and 

 beastly shire of all my realm,' he probably pictured 

 fairly enough for his day what is now one of the most 

 prosperous and fertile of our English counties. Even 

 the outline of this Eastern coast was once very different 

 from the present an estuary of the sea running up to 

 Norwich, and a wide channel separating Thanet from 

 the mainland of Kent. 



It is difficult to draw any comparison as to climate 

 where we possess no instrumental records of tempera- 

 ture, rains, winds, and other atmospheric states. From 

 various incidental notices Sir F. Palgrave has drawn 

 the conclusion that, at the era of the Conquest, it more 

 resembled the climate of Canada in its extremes of heat 

 and cold. The vineyards of Somersetshire, and the 

 notices of perpetual snow on the summit of the higher 

 hills, afford some evidence to this effect ; while the 

 large proportion of forest covering the island gives 

 plausible reason for its being so. 



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