Stratification of France and England, 131 



other words : ** This constancy in the order of superposi- 

 tion of the thinnest strata, and over an extent of" 700 

 miles in leni^th, ** is one of the most remarkable facts 

 which" I *' have established. From this, there ought to 

 result most intcresliug consequences to the Arts, and to 

 Geology." 



But let us return to our chalk strata, which, as they form 

 the basis of the Paris observations, require some further 

 notice. I am mvself, unfortunately, not sufficiently ac* 

 quaintcd with the French coast, to state the exact point 

 where the chalk terminates on the shore to the south of 

 Bolognc : and whether its termination there is occasioned 

 by its edge rising, passing inland, and exhibiting the under 

 strata on the coast, or whether the chalk by siul^ing down 

 permits its upper strata to cover it at the level of the shore *; 

 the former should perhaps seem the most probable, from 

 the circumstance of M. Cuvier aiid his associate being 

 able to assign a limit of naked chalk on all the north side 

 of the natural district, which they huve rendered so interest- 

 ing to science, under the appellation of the basin of Paris. 

 On the north-east of Calais, tlie great plain of chalk seems 

 to decline northward, and either its upper strata or alluvial 

 matters, of no immeasurable thickness I apprehend, pro- 

 gressively cover it as we proceed along the coast, or across 

 any part of the Netherlands, from France to the southern 

 part of the coast of Denmark. The chalk having, some- 

 where in this immense flat, obtained its lowest point, as the 

 bed of the German Ocean, it begins to rise again north- 

 ward, finally to terminate in the Dogger-Bank and the other 

 shoals which are seen in good charts, stretching across from 

 the coast of Yorkshire to the Danish coast, where the chalk 

 rises again, and its northern edge passes inland and across 

 the island of Zealand, as I have been informed, the coast 

 northward becoming occupied by the lower strata, which 

 also pass over from the Yorkshire coast, further north than 

 Flamborough Head. Flow then does it happen, that this 

 vast plain of chalk (which' it still is, if we neglect its local 

 inegularities) extending froni Normandy to Denmark, from 

 the confines of Hanover to Dorsetshire, and from the south- 

 ern border of Champagne to the middle of the Yorkshire 

 coast, exhibits the strata and astonishing organic remains of 

 the basin of Paris, only within that spot ? which is small 

 compared with the whole space in which the chalk lies 

 buried under other strata, either regular or alluvial. Is it 



♦• Perhaps some of yovir ccrrcspondents can jT^ratify me and the other 

 geological inquirer* among your readers, by an answer to these questions. 



1 2 because 



