76 SELECTED ESSAYS FROM LAY SERMONS 



those forms of shell-fish which are characteristic of fresh 

 water has yet been observed in it. 



When we consider that the remains of more -than three 

 thousand distinct species of aquatic animals have been 

 discovered among the fossils of the chalk, that the great 

 majority of them are of such forms as are now met with 

 only in the sea, and that there is no reason to believe 

 that any one of them inhabited fresh water — the collateral 

 evidence that the chalk represents an ancient sea-bottom 

 acquires as great force as the proof derived from the nature 

 of the chalk itself. I think you will now allow that I did 

 not overstate my case when I asserted that we have as 

 strong grounds for believing that all the vast area of dry 

 land, at present occupied by the chalk, was once at the 

 bottom of the sea, as we have for any matter of history 

 whatever; while there is no justification for any other belief. 



No less certain it is that the time during which the coun- 

 tries we now call south-east England, France, Germany, 

 Poland, Russia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, were more or less 

 completely covered by a deep sea, was of considerable 

 duration. We have already seen that the chalk is, in places, 

 more than a thousand feet thick. I think you will agree 

 with me, that it must have taken some time for the skele- 

 tons of animalcules of a hundredth of an inch in diameter 

 to heap up such a mass as that. I have said that through- 

 out the thickness of the chalk the remains of other animals 

 are scattered. These remains are often in the most ex- 

 quisite state of preservation. The valves of the shell-fishes 

 are commonly adherent; the long spines of some of the 

 sea-urchins, which w^ould be detached by the smallest jar, 

 often remain in their places. In a word, it is certain that 

 these animals have lived and died when the place which they 

 now occupy was the surface of as much of the chalk as had 



