VOL. XXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 0%l 



thence, might have continued, and been more strengthened, by what, on the 

 return of the tides, would daily be lodged there. And on this account I think 

 it is, that the isthmus at Corinth, though beaten on by the two seas which give 

 it the name of Bimaris Corinthus, is not thereby destroyed ; because there are 

 not such tides to wash it away, nor such in-draughts, on which to lodge what 

 might be washed from thence. 



But the case is far otherwise with this isthmus of ours ; where all circum- 

 stances concur to countenance this hypothesis. The steep cliffs at Dover and 

 those at Calais answering directly to each other, and appearing to view, as if 

 what between them had been violently torn away ; and also the sea between 

 them, even at this day, being much shallower at that place than on either side 

 of it, as Camden well observes ; which are strong presumptions that there had 

 been formerly such a conjunction. 



The greatest doubt in this case is, that there is no history extant, which 

 takes notice of such an isthmus, or of such a rupture, in this place ; which 

 being a thing remarkable, might have been thought worthy to be reported. 

 But this need not be thought very strange, since we have no particular account 

 of the British coast (which might determine this question) older than Julius 

 Caesar ; whereas this might have happened many hundred years before that time, 

 when, though the island might be known to the Greeks or Romans, yet not its 

 particular coastings. And further, Plato tells a story (as of a thing which had 

 happened some ages before his time, and which at that time was in a manner 

 generally forgotten) of an island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, which by a 

 deluge and earthquake in the space of a night and day was destroyed and swal- 

 lowed up by the sea, by which that sea. formerly navigable, was for some time 

 become dangerous, by reason of the mud and relics of that absorbed island. 

 Which seems very applicable to the rupture of this isthmus ; by which this island 

 was not indeed wholly destroyed, but was broken off from the continent to 

 which it was before united. And on such an accident the sea must needs be 

 disturbed, and put out of its course, and rendered unsafe for passage, before it 

 came to be settled again. For though the first breach might be made in the 

 space of one night and day, we cannot suppose the whole bulk of it, when 

 once broken, was presently carried quite away ; but first the top or upper part of 

 it in a day and night's time, and afterwards the lower parts of it by degrees. 

 Which would render that sea, if not quite impassable, at least troublesome and 

 unsafe. And if in some circumstance this narration happen to differ from the 

 matter of fact, as calling the rupture of this isthmus the submersion of an 

 island, this must be allowed in the narrative of an old tradition from hand to 

 hand, for as such it is there brought in. Plato introduces Critias, then an old 



