61 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



succeeded to rescue the drowned soil, and make it one of 

 the most fertile portions of Europe. The old mouth, 

 now the Swyn, between Sluys and Cadsandria, passed 

 through a vast pool, where the largest ships and fleets 

 could assemble ; and the Swyn mouth was still so broad, 

 in latter ages, that both the fleets of King John and of 

 Edward III. succeeded in attacking and destroying 

 their enemies within the port; but in time that har- 

 bour became marshy, and then meadow land. On the 

 side of the Western Scheldt, however, the land dimi- 

 nished, and between 1377 and 1477, upwards of forty 

 villages were submerged, chiefly about Biervliet. On 

 the coast, the village of Scharphout was swept away, in 

 1 334, to the sands where now Blankenberg is built ; 

 and Terstreep, near Ostend, shared the same fate. In 

 no part of this vast space of alluvial deposit have fossil 

 remains of Pachyderms been observed. In the Rhine 

 alone, and about the shores of that river, bones of two 

 species of Bos and of Cervns giganteus, or Irish Elk, 

 were noticed, and one or two Saurians, referred to 

 Crocodile, have been detected in Upper Flanders. 



