GEOLOGY OF FOLKESTONE — THE GAULT. 
205 
coimtriemen, M. Johii Twine, and M. Doctor Richard White, with 
sundrie others ; but these authors, following the opinion one of the 
other, are rather content to thinke it sometime so to have bin than 
to lahom* to find out by sundry pregnant reasons that so it was 
indeed. 
" The fii-st appearance to move likehhood of this thing is the 
neemes of land betweene England and France — to use the modern 
names of both countries — that is, from the clifs of Dover unto the 
like cliffs lying betweene Calls and Bullin, for from Dover to Calls 
is not the neerest land, nor yet are the soils alike ; the shore of 
Dover appearing unto the saylers high and chalkie, and the shore of 
CaHs low and altogether sandie, and in like manner the Enghsh 
shore towards Sandwich, which is more directly over against Cahs 
than Dover is, also doth. 
" These clifs on either side the sea, lying just opposite the one 
unto the other, both of one substance, that is, of chalke and flint, the 
sides of both towards the sea, plainely appearing to bee broken off 
from some more of the same stuffe, or matter that it hath sometime 
by nature been fastened unto ; the length of the said clifs along the 
sea-shore being on the one side answerable in effect to the length of 
the verie hke on the other side, and the distance between both, as 
some skilful saylers report, not exceeding twenty-four Enghsh miles, 
are all great arguments to prove a conjunction in time long past to 
have beene betweene these two countries, whereby men did passe on 
drie land from the one unto the other, as it were over a bridge or 
isthmus of land, being altogether of chalke and flint, and containing 
in length about the number of miles before specified, and in bredth 
some sixe English miles or thereabouts, whereby our countrie was 
then no iland, but peninsula, being thus fixed on to the maine con- 
tinent of the world." 
In the quaint sententious language of this extract, so character- 
istic of the style adopted by authors of the early part of the seven- 
teenth centmy, there are many striking truths which the judgment 
of the reader will at once perceive. 
Desmarest, in 1753, in his memorable paper, read before the 
Societe d'Emulation of Amiens, repeated the evidences previously 
brought forward by Verstegan, but carried them a step farther, 
