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



trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there with their 

 cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts ; there stand the stools 

 of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum 

 is appropriately called the &quot; forest-bed.&quot; 



It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and 

 converted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon 

 it. As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three 

 feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed 

 remained in the same condition for long ages. And not only do 

 the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the 

 duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to 

 the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, 

 rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, and other great wild beasts, 

 which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the 

 Rev. Mr. Gunn. 



When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and 

 bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry 

 their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark 

 woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is im 

 possible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse 

 of time as the annual rings of the tree-stumps. 



Thus there is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and 

 whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which 

 cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea 

 was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with 

 forest, stocked with the great game whose spoils have rejoiced 

 your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot 

 be said ; but &quot; the whirligig of time brought its revenges &quot; in 

 those days as in these. That dry land, with the bones and teeth 

 of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the 

 gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually 

 to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses 

 of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now 

 restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had 

 twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long 

 this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came 



