ON A PIECE OF CHALK 



IF a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the 

 city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find them- 

 selves at work in that white substance almost too 

 soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar 

 as "chalk." 



Not only here, but over the whole county of Nor- 

 folk, 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 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 Yorkshire; on the south coast it 

 appears abruptly in the picturesque western bays of 

 Dorset, and breaks into the 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 narrower, might be followed diagonally across 

 England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flamborough 

 Head in Yorkshire a distance of over two hundred 

 and eighty miles as the crow flies. 



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

 the Channel, on the South, the chalk is largely hidden 

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

 and Sussex, it enters into the very foundation of all 

 the south-eastern counties. 



