A THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. [cHar. x. 
unrecorded time; and that it would be inadmissible 
to speak of two portions of the same continuous 
deposit, however distant the times of their deposition 
might be, and however distinct their imbedded 
faunze, as belonging to different ‘Geological periods.’ 
It was certainly in this sense that in an address to 
a popular audience in April 1869 I ventured to state 
my belief that it is not only chalk which is being 
formed in the Atlantic, ** but the chalk, the chalk of 
the cretaceous period.”’ Sir Charles Lyell says, in 
summing up his objections to this view,’ ‘“ The 
reader will at once perceive that the present Atlantic, 
Pacific, and Indian oceans, are geographical terms 
which must be wholly without meaning when applied 
to the eocene, and still more to the cretaceous period, 
so that to talk of the chalk having been uninter- 
ruptedly formed in the Atlantic is as inadmissible in 
a geographical asin a geological sense.’ I confess 
I do not see the geographical difficulty ; the 
“Atlantic ocean”? is, undoubtedly, a geographical 
term, but the depression under discussion occupies 
the area at present expressed by that term, and to 
use it seems to be the simplest way of indicating its 
position. We believe that the balance of probability 
is greatly in favour of the chalk haying been unin- 
terruptedly forming over some parts of the area in 
question, and our belief is founded upon many con- 
siderations, physical and paleontological. 
All the principal axes of elevation in the north of 
Europe and in North America have a date long an- 
terior to the deposition of the tertiary, or even of the 
1 The Student’s Elements of Geology. By Sir Charles Lyell, Bart., 
F.R.S. London, 1871. P. 265. 
