64 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



did not overstate my case when I asserted that we 

 have as strong grounds for believing that all the 

 vast area of dry land, at present occupied by the 

 chalk, was once at the bottom of the sea, as we have 

 for any matter of history whatever ; while there is 

 no justification for any other belief. 



No less certain it is that the time during which the 

 countries we now call south-east England, France, 

 Germany, Poland, Russia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, 

 were more or less completely covered by a deep sea, 

 was of considerable duration. We have already 

 seen that the chalk is, in places, more than a thou- 

 sand feet thick. I think you will agree with me 

 that it must have taken some time for the skeletons 

 of animalcules of a hundredth of an inch in diameter 

 to heap up such a mass as that. 



If the decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin ; 

 the attachment, growth to maturity, and decay 

 of the Crania ; and the subsequent attachment and 

 growth of the coralline, took a year (which is a low 

 estimate enough), the accumulation of the inch of 

 chalk must have taken more than a year : and the 

 deposit of a thousand feet of chalk must, conse- 

 quently, have taken more than twelve thousand 

 years. 



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 the spoils of 

 which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it 

 remained in that condition cannot be said ; but "the 



