92 NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 



once covered the south-east part of England was the 

 mouth of a river of that far-descending class of which 

 the Mississippi and Amazon are examples. What part 

 of the earth's surface presented the dry land through 

 which that and other similar rivers flowed, no one can 

 tell for certain. It has been surmised that the par- 

 ticular one here spoken of may have flowed from a 

 point not nearer than the site of the present Newfound- 

 land. Professor Phillips has suggested, from the analogy 

 of the mineral composition, that anciently elevated coal 

 sti'ata may have composed the dry land from which the 

 sandy matters of these strata were washed. Such a 

 deposit as the Wealden almost necessarily implies a 

 local, not a general condition ; yet it has been thought 

 that similar strata and remains exist in the Pays de 

 Bray, near Beauvais. This leads to the supposition that 

 there may have been, in that age, a series of river- 

 receiving estuaries along the border of some such great 

 ocean as the Atlantic, of which that of modern Sussex is 

 only an example. 



