The great inequality of the surface of the earth was rendred so by
earthquakes: which when taking fire, they ran in traines severall
miles according to their cavernes; so for instance at Yatton Keynell,
Wilts, a crack beginnes which runnes to Longdeanes, in the parish, and
so to Slaughtonford, where are high steep cliffs of freestone, and
opposite to it at Colern the like cliffs; thence to Bathe, where on
the south side appeare Claverdon, on the north, Lansdon cliffs, both
downes of the same piece; and it may be at the same tune the crack was
thus made at St. Vincent's rocks near Bristow, as likewise Chedar
rocks, like a street. From Castle Combe runnes a valley or crack to
Ford, where it shootes into that that runnes from Yatton to Bathe.
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Edmund Waller, Esq., the poet, made a quaere, I remember, at the Royal
Society, about 1666, whether Salisbury plaines were always plaines ?
In Jamaica, and in other plantations of America, e. g. in Virginia,
the natives did burn down great woods, to cultivate the soil with maiz
and potato-rootes, which plaines were there made by firing the woods
to sowe corne. They doe call these plaines Savannas. Who knowes but
Salisbury plaines, &c. might be made long time ago, after this manner,
and for the same reason ?
I have oftentimes wished for a mappe of England coloured according to
the colours of the earth; with markes of the fossiles and minerals.
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