ACTION OF THE SEA. 



141 



St. Leonard, the high road, town-hall, jail, and many 

 other buildings, with the dates when they perished. 

 In short, this once flourishing city is now but a 

 small, miserable village, the ground a mile and a 

 half wide, on which it stood, having been all wash- 

 ed away by the sea. The village of Aldborough, on 

 the same coast, is known to have been once situ- 

 ated a quarter of a mile east of the present shore. 

 Indeed, where the town formerly stood, the water 

 is twenty-four feet deep. On the coast of Kent 

 there are numerous examples of the loss of land. 

 It is calculated that the Isle of Sheppey, which is 

 now about six miles long by four in breadth, and 

 composed of London clay, will in fifty years be en- 

 tirely annihilated. The church at Minster, once in 

 the middle of the island, is now situated on the 

 coast near the sea. A little farther east, the town of 

 Reculreec, which, as late as Henry VIII. 's reign, was 

 a mile distant from the ocean, is now partly washed 

 away, and in 1834 an artificial causeway of stones 

 and large wooden piles were driven into the sands 

 to break the force of the waves, in order to save 

 the church from destruction, with which it was 

 threatened. 



In the year 1753, a society at Amiens, in France, 

 proposed as a subject of a prize essay the question 

 whether France and England were formerly uni- 

 ted. The prize was gained by a young man by the 

 name of Desmarest, who founded his principal ar- 

 guments on the identity of composition of the cliffs 

 on the opposite sides of the channel ; on a sub-ma- 

 rine chain extending from Boulogne to Foulkestone, 

 only fourteen feet under water; and on the identity 

 of the noxious animals in England and France, 

 which could not have been introduced by man. 

 He supposes the isthmus was ruptured by a violent 

 current from the north. On this subject Mr. Lyell 

 remarks, " It will hardly be disputed that the ocean 

 might have effected a breach through the land 

 which, in all probability, once united this country 



