IX. 



ON A PIECE OF CHALK. 

 A LECTURE TO WORKING MEN. 



IF a well were 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 &quot; chalk.&quot; 



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 western bays 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 Lulworth in Dorset, to- 

 Flamborough Head in Yorkshire a distance of over 280 miles, 

 as the crow flies. 



