•5C) GEOLOGY OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT. 



constitute the dry land of the British Isles have 

 not been produced by the effects of a general 

 deluge, would therefore be as derogatory to his 

 understanding, as to explain that the apparent 

 revolution of the sun round our planet is an 

 optical illusion, occasioned by the rotation of the 

 earth on its axis. 



We may, therefore, assume, that every intel- 

 ligent person is aware that the rocks and stones, 

 and solid mineral masses, composing the dry land, 

 have originally been in a softened or fluid state, 

 either from the effects of water, or from exposure 

 to a high temperature — that the strata are accu- 

 mulations of consolidated mud, sand, and other 

 detritus, the sedimentary deposits of rivers and 

 seas, combined with the durable remains of animals 

 and plants, which lived either on the land, or in 

 the water — that chalk is an aggregation of shells, 

 corals, and amorphous particles of carbonate of 

 lime, so minute as to be undistinguishable by 

 the naked eye, yet easily recognisable under the 

 microscope — that the layers and nodules of Hint 

 have originated from solutions of siliceous earth in 

 heated vapour, or water, that were periodically 

 erupted into tin cretaceous ocean — that the fossils 

 so abundant in the chalk, are the relics of animals 

 and plants thai lived and died in that ancient sea, 



