IX. 



ON A PIECE OF CHALK. 



A LECTURE TO WORKING MEN. 



Iff a well were to be sunk at our feet in the midst of 

 the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find 

 themselves at work in that white substance almost too 

 soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as 

 " chalk." 



Not only here, but over the whole county of Norfolk, 

 the well-sinker might carry his shaft down many hundred 

 feet without coming to the end of the chalk ; and, on 

 the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the 

 face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces 

 of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same 

 material. Northward, the chalk may be followed as far 

 as Yorkshire ; on the south coast it appears abruptly 

 in the picturesque west embays of Dorset, and breaks 

 into the Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the 

 shores of Kent it supplies that long line of white cliffs 

 to which England owes her name of Albion. 



Were the thin soil which covers it all washed away, 

 a curved band of white chalk, here broader, and there 

 narrower, might be followed diagonally across England 

 from Lnlworth in Dorset, to Flamboron^h Head in 



