6'20 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1701. 



been once sea, is now raised 30 or 40 feet higher than it had once been. And 

 the same northern sea, which on this account has so large an inlet eastward 

 on the coast of Holland, would, westward, insinuate itself likewise on the 

 English coast, wherever it might find low grounds. Which is the case of this 

 large valley, where now runs the river Sture, Stoure, or Esture, which name it 

 is supposed to have taken from the corruption of ^Estuarium, for more than 20 

 miles ; entering at the low grounds near Sandwich, close by that isthmus, and 

 running up that level, by Canterbury, Chartham, Chilham, and so on, as far 

 as Ashford, or farther. Which valley had once been much deeper than it is 

 now ; for it seems that even at Chartham, which is now 12 miles from the sea, 

 the ground is raised at least 1 7 feet ; and the soil at that depth is found to be 

 of a like condition, as where the sea is known to have been ; and nearer to the 

 sea it may well be presumed to have been yet deeper. Which is confirmed, as 

 Mr. Somner tells us, by the relics of the marine animals found there ; as also 

 by anchors and shells of fish, found elsewhere in the borders of this valley, 

 at a great depth under ground. 



Now, that the sea may thus raise the ground on such in-draughts by sand, 

 earth, and mud, brought in and lodged there at every tide, is not at all unlikely, 

 for we see the same at this day, particularly in the isle of Oxney, near Romney- 

 marsh, where was a low level, often in danger of being overflowed by the river 

 Rother. But, somewhat more than 60 years since, the sea being let into it has 

 raised that level very considerably, by bringing in and lodging there a consider- 

 able deal of earth and mud every tide. And it has besides so fretted the chan- 

 nel by which it enters and returns again, that the channel near Rye, which 

 within my memory was so shallow near what was called Kent-bridge, that men 

 and women used to ride through it ; but now, by the tides entering and return- 

 ing, that bridge is long since swallowed up, and the channel become so broad 

 and deep, that a vessel of good burden might ride there at anchor ; which is a 

 fit resemblance of the sea's fretting this isthmus, and filling up the aestuariea 

 on both sides of it. The like, in a good measure, is to be seen at the Dogger 

 Sands, which is a bank of sand lying obliquely from about the coast of Norfolk 

 towards the coast of Zealand, or north part of Holland ; which is the place 

 where the northern and western tides, since the rupture of the isthmus, do now 

 meet, and do there, at still water, for about an hour, or at the turning of the 

 tide, deposit the mud and sand, which by their rapid motion is brought thither 

 both ways, and which is supposed to be the true cause of that sand bank. 

 Whether this, in process of time, may form a new isthmus there I cannot say; 

 but I am apt to think that the former isthmus, if the tides had stopped there, 

 and had not found those in-draughts, on which to lodge what it washed from 



