54 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



a mass of considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers 

 but an insignificant portion of the whole area occupied by the 

 chalk formation of the globe, which has precisely the same 

 general characters as ours, and is found in detached patches, 

 5 some less, and others more extensive, than the English. 



Chalk occurs in northwest Ireland; it stretches over a 

 large part of France, the chalk which underlies Paris being, 

 in fact, a continuation of that of the London basin ; it runs 

 through Denmark, and Central Europe and extends south- 



10 ward to North Africa ; while eastward, it appears in the Cri- 

 mea and in Syria, and may be traced as far as the shores of 

 the Sea of Aral, in Central Asia. 



If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circum- 

 scribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about 3,000 



15 miles in long diameter the area of which would be as great 

 as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the 

 largest existing inland sea the Mediterranean. 



Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry 

 of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying 



20 with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery 

 of the districts in which it occurs. The undulating downs 

 and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of 

 our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domestic and 

 mutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either 



25 grand or beautiful. But on our southern coasts, the wall- 

 sided cliffs, many hundred feet high, with vast needles and 

 pinnacles standing out in the sea, sharp and solitary enough 

 to serve as perches for the wary cormorant, confer a wonderful 

 beauty and grandeur upon the chalk headlands. And, in 



3 the East, chalk has its share in the formation of some of the 

 most venerable of mountain ranges, such as the Lebanon. 



What is this widespread component of the surface of the 

 earth ? and whence did it come ? 



