The Fens must have been in a very dismal state before the arrival of the Romans; and their exertions, undoubtedly, wrought a mighty, and most happy change in the face of the country. Houses, villages, and towns would now appear in places that were before perfectly desolate and dreary. At this period we may venture to date the origin of Lynn; for it may be pretty safely concluded that it owes its rise to the schemes formed by the Romans for the recovery and improvement of these fens and marshes. It is also very probable, not only that it was the first town built in these parts, on that occasion, but also that it was built and inhabited by those foreign colonists above mentioned, and derived its name from them. This however is not the proper place for the further elucidation of this point: our present business being with the history of the Fens. SECTION II. _Further strictures on the ancient state of this country_, _and on a wonderful change it appears to have undergone_, _at a very remote and unknown period_; _from De Serra’s account of a submarine Forest on the coast of Lincolnshire_. SOME very remote ages ago, the land, it seems, extended much further out on the Lincolnshire coast than it does at present; and it appears that whole forests once existed in places now wholly occupied by the ocean; which must tend to corroborate what has been already suggested, that the whole face of the fens was originally a forest. A remarkable Paper, giving an account of a _Submarine Forest_ on the said coast, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1799. Part I. written by Joseph Correa De Serra L.L.D. F.R.S. and A.S. in which the Author informs us of a report in Lincolnshire, that a large extent of islets of moor, situated along the coast, and visible only in the lowest ebbs of the year, was chiefly composed of decayed trees. That report induced him to take a journey thither for the purpose of inspecting so singular a curiosity. Those islets, he observes, are marked in _Mitchell’s Chart_ of that coast by the name of _Clay huts_; and the Village of _Huttoft_, opposite to which they principally lie, he supposes to have derived its name from them.