This is owing to the natural inactivity of matter, which is not easily susceptible of motion. Now at the time that the body of the earth was in a mixt state between solid and fluid, before its present form of land and sea was perfectly determined, the almighty Artist gave it its great diurnal motion. By this means the elevated parts or mountainous tracts, as they consolidated whilst yet soft and yielding, flew somewhat westward, and spread forth a long declivity to the east: the same is to be said of the plains, their natural descent tending that way, and, as I doubt not, of the superfice of the earth below the ocean. This critical minute is sublimely described by the admirable poet and observer of nature, _Namque canebat, uti magnum per inane coacta Semina terrarumque, animæque, marisque fuissent, Et liquidi simul ignis. Ut his exordia primis Omnia, & ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis. Tum durare solum & discludere nerea ponto Cœperit, & rerum paulatim sumere formas._ +Virg.+ Ecl. +VI.+ which may thus be englished. He sang, how from the mighty void, in one Large space, collected were the fluid seeds Of earth, air, sea and fire; from these came all. The callow world became one massive globe; The ocean by the hard’ning ground disjoin’d, New forms surpris’d the beauteous face of things. The truth of this observation I have seen universally confirmed in all my travels, and innumerable instances of it will occur to the reader throughout these discourses. I design another time professedly to treat of it in a philosophical way. But consequent to this doctrine it is that we have so large a quantity of this marshland in the middle of the eastern shore of England, seeming as if made by the washings and _eluvies_ of the many rivers that fall that way, such as the Welland, the Witham, the Nen, the Ouse great and little, together with many other streams of inferior note. These all empty themselves into the great bay formed between the Lincolnshire wolds and cliffs of Norfolk, called by Ptolemy _Mentaris æstuarium_, as rightly corrected by Mr. Baxter, seeing it is composed of the mouths of so many rivers; _Ment_, or _Mant_, signifying _ostium_ in the British language. Beside the great quantity of high and inland country that discharges its waters this way, even as far as Fritwell in Oxfordshire; all the level country lies before it, extending itself from within some few miles of Cambridge south, to Keal hills near Bolingbroke in Lincolnshire north, about sixty miles long, known by the names of the Isle of Ely, Holland and Marshland. This country, since the flood, I believe was much in the same state as at present, and for its bulk the richest spot of ground in the kingdom; once well inhabited by gentry, especially the religious. I apprehend the more inland part of it, the Isle of Ely, Deeping Fen, &c. was not in distant ages in so bad a condition as now,