270 



CLIFFS OF CHALK IN NORMANDY. 



[Ch. XIX 



of flint projecting several feet. Like them, also, it exhibits a white 

 powdery surface, and consists entirely of horizontal chalk with flints. 

 It is 40 miles inland, its height, in some parts, exceeds 200 feet, and 

 its base is only a few feet above the level of the Seine. It is broken, in 

 one place, by a pyramidal mass or needle, 200 feet high, called the 

 Roche de Pignon, which stands out about 25 feet in front of the upper 

 portion of the main cliffs, with which it is united by a narrow ridge 

 about 40 feet lower than its summit (see fig. 318). Like the detached 



Fig. 818. 



View of the Koche de Pignon, seen from the south. 



rocks before mentioned at Senneville, Vatteville, and Andelys, it may be 

 compared to those needles of chalk which occur on the coast of Nor- 

 mandy* (see fig. 319), as w T ell as in the Isle of Wight and in Purbeck. 



Fig. 819. 



Needle and Arch of Etretat, in the chalk cliffs of Normandy. 

 Height of Arch 100 feet (Passy.)t 



The foregoing description and drawings will show, that the evidence 

 of certain escarpments of the chalk having been originally sea-cliffs, is 

 far more full and satisfactory in France than in England. If it be asked 

 why, in the interior of our own country, we meet with no ranges of 

 precipices equally vertical and overhanging, and no isolated pillars or 

 needles, we may reply that the greater hardness of the chalk in Nor- 

 mandy may, no doubt, be the chief cause of this difference. But the 



* An account of these cliffs was read by the author to the British Assoc at 

 Glasgow, Sept. 1840. 



f Seine-Inferieure, p. 14'i, and pi. 6, fig. 1. 



