ON A PIECE OF CHALK 



[1868] 



If a well were 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 country of Norfolk, 

 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 mav be followed as far as Yorkshire; on the 

 south coast it appears abruptly in the picturesque west- 

 ern 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 nar- 

 rower, 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. 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. 



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

 than a thousand feet, the English chalk must be admitted 



