200 A LUMP OF CHALK AND ITS LESSONS. 



CHAPTER XX. 



A LUMP OF CHALK AND ITS LESSONS. 



PROBABLY all Englishmen certainly all those dwelling 

 in the eastern and south-eastern counties are familiar 

 with the pure white rock which we call, from the Latin 

 creta, chalk. It is indeed this very familiarity which 

 breeds the proverbial contempt, and causes us to take but 

 scant or little notice of what is really a very beautiful 

 substance in itself, altogether apart from the interest 

 with which it is invested from a geological point of view. 

 If chalk were very rare instead of being exceedingly 

 abundant, there is little doubt that it would be reckoned 

 as a beautiful substance, worthy to stand as the best 

 example of a pure white mineral alongside of virgin 

 sulphur as the finest example of a yellow one. If, more- 

 over, chalk had happened to have undergone the action of 

 intense heat under equally intense pressure, it would 

 assuredly have produced an even finer and purer statuary 

 marble than that of Carrara, and might thus have been 

 one of the most valuable of rocks. 



A complaint may not unf requently be heard among those 

 more or less deeply interested in geological science who 

 happen to dwell in a chalk country, that the very sameness 

 of the chalk formation throughout England prevents them 

 from finding any interest in the geology of their own 

 districts, and thus leads them to regret that their lot had 

 not been cast in regions where a variety of rocks are to be 

 met with. Although there is a considerable amount of 

 truth in this complaint, yet if rightly studied the chalk is 

 so peculiar and unique a formation as rather to embarrass 

 us with the number of considerations and problems to 

 which it gives rise, than to be deficient in interest. 



Examining a lump of the pure white chalk of many 

 parts of England, such as that of Dover, we find that it 

 consists, both under the naked eye and an ordinary lens, 



