66 LANDSCAPE AND IMAGINATION 



that charm ? Again, I accept the challenge, though 

 with perhaps somewhat more diffidence; not that I 

 think the contribution from science is here less avail- 

 able or less appropriate, but because I so fully share 

 in the feeling that a scene, in itself and to the ordinary 

 eye so full of everything that can give pleasure, needs 

 no addition from any source. 



Let me suppose that we are placed upon the extreme 

 western verge of the down, with the Needles in front 

 of us. The chalk that forms these white faces of rock 

 is shown by science to be made up entirely of the 

 mouldered remains of creatures that gathered on the 

 sea-bottom, ages before the species of animals living 

 at the present day came into existence. Sponges, 

 crinoids, corals, shells, fishes, reptiles, mingled their 

 remains with those of the minuter forms of life that 

 accumulated on the floor of that ancient ocean. And 

 now, hardened into stone, the ooze of that sea-bed 

 has been upraised into land. The ' long backs of the 

 bushless downs,' which for many successive centuries 

 have remained as we see them, were originally parts of 

 the sea-bed, and are entirely built up of the vestiges 

 of dead organisms. 



But this is not all. Look at one of those noble faces 

 of rock which shoot up from the restless breakers, and 

 take note of the parallel lines of dark flints which, 

 as if traced with a pencil, sweep in such graceful curves 

 from base to crest of the cliffs. Alike on buttress 

 and recess, from headland to headland, no matter how 

 irregularly the chalk has been sculptured, these parallel 

 lines may be followed. A feature so conspicuous in 

 the architecture of the precipices could not escape the 



