ROOM III. GEOLOGICAL SUMMARY. 223 



masses of the bed of the chalk-ocean, and of the Wealden 

 strata beneath, became dry land and at length those more re- 

 cent deposits, containing the remains of the herbivorous mam- 

 malia which were the last tenants of the country. The oak, 

 elm, ash, and other' trees of modern Europe, now sprang up 

 where the groves of palms and tree-ferns once flourished the 

 stag, boar, and horse, ranged over the plains in which were 

 entombed the bones of the colossal reptiles and finally, Man 

 appeared, and took possession of the soil. 



Subsequently to the occupation of these islands by the 

 aboriginal tribes, the country has undergone no important 

 physical mutations. The usual effects of the atmosphere, the 

 wasting of the shores by the encroachments of the sea, the 

 erosion of the land by streams and rivers, the silting up of 

 valleys, and the formation of deltas, are apparently the only 

 terrestrial changes to which the south-east of England has 

 been subjected during the historic ages. 



At the present time, the deposits containing the remains 

 of the mammoth and other extinct mammalia, are the sites 

 of towns and villages, and support busy communities of the 

 human race ; the Hunstman courses, and the Shepherd tends 

 his flocks on the elevated masses of the bottom of the ancient 

 chalk-ocean the Farmer reaps his harvests from the cul- 

 tivated soil of the delta of the country of the Iguanodon 

 and the Architect obtains from beneath the petrified forest 

 the materials with which to construct his temples and his 

 palaces : while, from these various strata, the Geologist gathers 

 together the relics of the beings that lived and died in periods 

 of unfathomable antiquity, and of which the very types have 

 long since been obliterated from the face of the earth, and 

 endeavours from these memorials, to trace the nature and 

 succession of those physical revolutions which preceded all 

 history and tradition. 1 



1 " Wonders of Geology," p. 446. 



