ON A PIECE OF CHALK 



A LECTURE TO WORKINGMEN 



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

 of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves 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 Norfolk, the 5 

 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, 10 

 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. 15 



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 280 miles as the crow flies. 20 



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 southeastern coun- 

 ties. 2$, 



Attaining, as it does in some places, a thickness of more than 

 a thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted to be 



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