ON A PIECE OF CHALK 

 (1868) 



IF a well were to be 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 



5 " chalk." 



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 

 10 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 York- 

 shire; on the south coast it appears abruptly in the 

 picturesque western bays of Dorset, and breaks into the 

 15 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 

 20 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. 



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



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



other deposits; but, except in the Weald of Kent and 



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