2 ON A PIECE OF CHALK I 



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 narrower, might be followed diagonally 

 across England from Lulworth in Dorset, to Flam- 

 borough 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 to be a mass of considerable 

 magnitude. Nevertheless, it covers but an insig- 

 nificant portion of the whole area occupied 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 east- 

 ward, 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 



