1G4 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [ix. 



vast area of dry land, at present occupied by the chalk, was 

 once at the bottom of the sea, as we have for any matter 

 of history whatever; while there is no justification for any 

 other belief. 



No less certain it is that the time during which the countries 

 we now call south-east England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, 

 Egypt, Arabia, Syria, were more or less completely covered by a 

 deep sea, was of considerable duration. 



We have already seen that the chalk is, in places, more than 

 a thousand feet thick. I think you will agree with me, that it 

 must have taken some time for the skeletons of animalcules of a 

 hundredth of an inch in diameter to heap up such a mass as 

 that. I have said that throughout the thickness of the chalk 

 the remains of other animals are scattered. These remains are 

 often in the most exquisite state of preservation. The valves of 

 the shell-fishes are commonly adherent ; the long spines of some 

 of the sea-urchins, which would be detached by the smallest jar, 

 often remain in their places. In a word, it is certain that these 

 animals have lived and died when the place which they now 

 occupy was the surface of as much of the chalk as had then 

 been deposited ; and that each has been covered up by the layer 

 of Globigcrina mud, upon which the creatures imbedded a little 

 higher up have, in like manner, lived and died. But some of 

 these remains prove the existence of reptiles of vast size in the 

 chalk sea. These lived their time, and had their ancestors and 

 descendants, which assuredly implies time, reptiles being of 

 slow growth. 



There is more curious evidence, again, that the process of 

 covering up, or, in other words, the deposit of Globigerina 

 skeletons, did not go on very fast. It is demonstrable that an 

 animal of the cretaceous sea might die, that its skeleton might 

 lie uncovered upon the sea-bottom long enough to lose all its 

 outward coverings and appendages by putrefaction ; and that, 

 after this had happened, another animal might attach itself to 

 the dead and naked skeleton, might grow to maturity, and might 

 itself die before the calcareous mud had buried the whole. 



