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



Nor have these wonderful metamorphoses of sea into land, and 

 of land into sea, been confined to one corner of England. During 

 the chalk period, or &quot; cretaceous epoch,&quot; not one of the present 

 great physical features of the globe was in existence. Our great 

 mountain ranges, Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, Andes, have all 

 been upheaved since the chalk was deposited, and the cretaceous 

 sea flowed over the sites of Sinai and Ararat. 



All this is certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, 

 date have shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to 

 these mountain chains ; and may be found perched up, in some 

 cases, many thousand feet high upon their flanks. And evidence 

 of equal cogency demonstrates that, though, in Norfolk, the 

 forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet it does so, not 

 because the period at which the forest grew immediately followed 

 that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immense 

 lapse of time, represented elsewhere by thousands of feet of rock, 

 is not indicated at Cromer. 



I must ask you to believe that there is no less conclusive 

 proof that a still more prolonged succession of similar changes 

 occurred, before the chalk was deposited. Nor have we any 

 reason to think that the first term in the series of these changes 

 is known. The oldest sea-beds preserved to us are sands, and 

 mud, and pebbles, the wear and tear of rocks which were formed 

 in still older oceans. 



But, great as is the magnitude of these physical changes of 

 the world, they have been accompanied by a no less striking 

 series of modifications in its living inhabitants. 



All the great classes of animals, beasts of the field, fowls of the 

 air, creeping things, and things which dwell in the waters, 

 flourished upon the globe long ages before the chalk was 

 deposited. Very few, however, if any, of these ancient forms of 

 animal life were identical with those which now live. Certainly 

 not one of the higher animals was of the same species as any of 

 those now in existence. The beasts of the field, in the days 

 before the chalk, were not our beasts of the field, nor the fowls 

 of the air such as those which the eye of men has seen flying, 



