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 afr Minster, once in 
the middle of the island, is now situated on the 
coast near the sea. A httle farther east, the town of 
Reculreec, which, as late as Henry VIlL'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 
