152 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [ix. 



From this band to the North Sea, on the east, and the 

 Channel, on the south, the chalk is largely hidden by other 

 deposits ; but, except in the Weald of Kent and Sussex, it 

 enters into the very foundation of all the south-eastern 

 counties. 



Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than 

 a thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted to be a 

 mass of considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an 

 insignificant portion of the whole area occupied by the chalk 

 formation of the globe, which has precisely the same general 

 characters as ours, and is found in detached patches, some less, 

 and others more extensive, than the English. 



Chalk occurs in north-west Ireland ; it stretches over a large 

 part of France, the chalk which underlies Paris being, in fact, 

 a continuation of that of the London basin ; it runs through 

 Denmark and Central Europe, and extends southward to North 

 Africa ; while eastward, it appears in the Crimea and in Syria, 

 and may be traced as far as the shores of the Sea of Aral, in 

 Central Asia. 



If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circum 

 scribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3,000 

 miles in long diameter the area of which would be as great as 

 that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the 

 largest existing inland sea the Mediterranean. 



Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of 

 the earth s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with 

 the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the 

 districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs and rounded 

 coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk 

 country, have a peacefully domestic and mutton-suggesting 

 prettiness, but can hardly be called either grand or beautiful. 

 But on our southern coasts, the wall-sided cliffs, many hundred 

 feet high, with vast needles and pinnacles standing out in the 

 sea, sharp and solitary enough to serve as perches for the wary 

 cormorant, confer a wonderful beauty and grandeur upon the 

 chalk headlands. And, in the East, chalk has its share in the 



