VOL. XXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 623 



Foxcomb Hill, and so on towards Wallingford, in the time of the Romans 

 called Galena. But there is this to countenance it, that there are frequently 

 found, in the stone quarries and gravel-pits about Oxford, fish shells, and even 

 the bodies of fish petrified, at great depths under ground. And there have no 

 doubt been, and now are in England, many other aestuaries, creeks, or arms ot 

 the sea, entering a great way within land, some of which may in a manner be 

 filled up, and become firm land ; others much narrower, shallower, and shorter, 

 than in former times. For it is the nature of aestuaries, where the tides flow 

 in, to leave behind them, at their return, a deal of mud, ouse, or sleech, which 

 in time becomes firm land. 



Moreover, at Hythe in Kent, which is one of the Cinque Ports, there was 

 formerly a convenient harbour for small vessels ; which is now swarved up. 

 Several attempts have been made to recover the harbour, but with little success. 

 For when, with great labour and charge, they have in some measure opened 

 it, it has soon been filled up again, by what the sea throws up. And whoever 

 considers the vast quantity of beach, that is, a vast multitude of small loose 

 stones and fish shells, cast up by the sea at Hythe, Lyd, and elsewhere on the 

 coast of Romney-Marsh, for several miles in length and breadth, and to a 

 great depth, will not think it strange, that a creek or aestuary should come in 

 time to be filled up, and become firm land. And in many places of this beachy 

 ground, where, within the memory of persons now living, nothing was to be 

 seen but such loose stones and shells to a great depth, it comes by degrees to 

 be covered with earth, and becomes pasture ground. On the contrary, that 

 what was formerly firm-land, might be so destroyed, or washed away, as to 

 become sea, is evident from the Goodwin-sands, on the coast of Kent, which 

 are said to have been the lands of Earl Goodwin ; but lost by an inundation 

 about the time that Tenterden steeple was built, which gave occasion to that 

 ironical Proverb of things contemporary, that Tenterden steeple was the cause 

 of Goodwin sands. The occasion of such different effects, depending on the 

 different situation of the shores, and the setting of the tides, so as to wash off 

 from one place what it lodges on another. 



And many such alterations have no doubt happened on the face of the earth, 

 all the world over, of which we have no particular histories. For the world 

 was of a great age, before the writing of any histories, except the Bible, as 

 far as we know. And who knows, but that in former ages, even amidst the 

 alps, there may have been large lakes, which in process of time, by earthquakes 

 or other accidents, may have been drained of their water, and become fruitful 

 valleys : of which it is said many symptoms have been discovered, even among 



