40 DESCRIPTION OF THE STRATA. 



eighty acres of meadow; besides what other proprietors had in the 

 same places.* These last instances have been quoted, chiefly be- 

 cause the boggy islets, on the Lincolnshire coast, examined by Sir 

 Joseph Banks and Dr. de Serra in 1796, lie opposite to Huttoft and 

 Sutton.t As the sea appears to have made very great inroads on the 

 coast, at no very distant date, it may be presumed, that the moory 

 islets now discernible, are fragments of what was meadow or marsh 

 land at the era of Domesday. 



An extensive chain of meres has skirted the shores of Lincoln- 

 shire, so that their bottoms, now exposed to the sea, form almost 

 one continued morass. The barrier which for some ages secured 

 them against the inroads of the ocean, has long ago been broken 

 through; yet we need not doubt that such a bai'rier once existed. If 

 any should allege, that they are of too great extent to have been so 

 secured, let them recollect, that there are fens or meres in Lin- 

 colnshii'e, of great extent, fi-bm which the ocean is still shut out. 

 Were the sea to break into these fens, their bottoms would become 

 another large morass, similar to what is now exposed along the shore. 

 So early as the reign of the Conqueror, the sea had commenced its 

 inroads on this coast ; for we find it stated, concerning some land at a 

 place called Wrangle, that "it was waste on account of the flowing 

 of the sea."J As there were a few places on the coast with the term 

 Die or Dyke occurring in their names, it seems probable, that some 

 dykes, or artificial barriei-s, were constructed even at that distant 

 era, to check the encroachments of the ocean. 



With respect to the morasses on the banks of the Humber and 

 its tributary rivers, it is most probable, that they have been formed, 

 at a remote period, in consequence of the obstruction of the mouth 



* Bawdwen, p. 419, 479, 513, 562, 603, &c. t See Pliilos. Transactions for 1799. 



% Bawdweu's Domesday, p. 592. 



