ON A PIECE OF CHALK 63 



to be a mass of considerable magnitude. Nevertheless, it 

 covers but an insignificant portion of the whole area occu- 

 pied by the chalk formation of the globe, much of which 

 has the same general characters as ours, and is found in 

 detached patches, some less, and others more extensive, 

 than the English. Chalk occurs in north-west 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 southward to North Africa; while 

 eastward, it appears in the Crimea 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 

 circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval 

 about 3,000 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 Medi- 

 terranean. 



Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry 

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

 varying 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 domes- 

 tic and mutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be 

 called either 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 the East, chalk has its share in the 

 formation of some of the most venerable of mountain ranges, 

 such as the Lebanon. 



