Physical Geography. 233 



The meaning of this is, that distinct coarse Upper 

 Greensand strata were deposited not far from shore in 

 the west, gradually getting finer towards the east, 

 because the finer and lighter material was drifted further 

 from shore. At the very same time, in the farther east 

 of what is now England, the sediments were still finer, 

 and depositions akin to Chalk, and even the Chalk itself, 

 had begun to be formed in a deeper sea, far removed 

 from land, so that according to this view, part of the 

 lowest strata of the Chalk, in the eastern and south- 

 eastern parts of England, were deposited contempora- 

 neously with the coarse Upper Greensand of eastern 

 Devonshire. On no other hypothesis that I know than 

 this of Godwin-Austen's, can the phenomena connected 

 with the Gault, Upper Greensand, and the lower strata 

 of the Chalk, be rationally accounted for, and I believe 

 that hypothesis to be true. 



The upper strata of the Chalk consist of nearly 

 pure chalk with lines of flint, and as it accumulated, 

 the sinking of the western and northern fragments 

 of the old continent steadily continued, till at length 

 they almost, if not entirely, sank beneath a sea, 

 broad and silent, except when roused by storms, like 

 the Atlantic of our own time, for though the Echini and 

 shells found in our chalk, show that the sea of those 

 days was not so deep as the present Atlantic, yet the pre- 

 valence of prodigious numbers of Globigerina and other 

 Foraminifera shows that the old and the new seas are 

 akin in the nature of their organic sediments. If the 

 whole of the older land was not submerged, (making an 

 allowance for the lowering of the mountain lands by 

 subsequent subaerial waste,) even then we can only 

 suppose that a few insignificant islets rose above a waste 

 of waters, that spread not only over Britain, but also 



