the Atlantic, where very recent as well as more ancient history attests the ravages of the waters in the destruction of towns and woods, the inundation of whole parishes, the severance of the hill of St. Michael from the main land, and, according to tradition, in the obliteration of the south-western district, of unknown extent. Familiarized to facts such as these, and their necessary deductions, the mind no longer startles at the notion of the former physical union of the two countries. The agency seen in operation is demonstrably adequate to the effect. The straits are narrow. Their greatest depth between Dover and Calais is twenty-nine fathoms. The bed throughout is composed of the same stratum of chalk-rock, while a submarine chain extending from Boulogne to Folkestone is only a few fathoms under low water. Accordingly the wave of the mighty “ocean stream,” parted on the western coast, met tide after tide on the opposite banks of the connecting peninsula or narrow tongue of land, the one portion winding round by the Orcades and rolling up the German Sea, and the other portion beating on the line of cliffs facing to the west. The softer sedimentary deposits of the tertiaries would rapidly yield to the constant erosive action; the harder strata of the chalk, bared and undermined, would speedily follow; and thus, in a period comparatively short, the entire mass would be carried away, and the gulf of separation be irrevocably effected. As a proof that France and England were united, and that these operations were continued _within_ the human epoch, M. Desmarest, in his prize essay on this subject, proposed in 1753 by a society at Amiens, adduces the fact, that the noxious animals in both countries are identical, creatures which were not fitted to swim across the straits, and were not of a kind to be willingly introduced by man. But Desmarest in this only followed the views of an older writer, and from whose work, “Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,” all his facts and reasonings are obviously borrowed. This curious volume is the production of Richard Verstegan, written about two hundred and fifty years ago, and dedicated to James I. of Great Britain. The principal object of the author is to trace out the origin of the western nations, and more especially of “the most noble and renowned English nation,” as discoverable in their language and other antiquities. The fourth chapter of this quaint work is entitled, “How the Isle of Albion is showed to have been continent or firm land with Gallia, now named France, since the Flood of Noah.” Verstegan holds the doctrine that “in whatever manner and form it pleased Almighty God, in the beginning of the world, to divide the sea from the dry land, is unto us wholly unknown; but altogether unlikely it is that there were any _isles_ before the deluge;” and to this event he ascribes the disruption of much of the dry land and the formation of islands. The connection of