Chalk and Flint Formation. 7 



chalk taken from the interior of a flint, and can find 

 no vestige of foraminiferae or minute shells of any 

 kind. And I venture to suggest that, in extending 

 to the whole mass of the chalk formation, a con- 

 clusion drawn from that small quantity of some 

 favourable marine specimens 6 which could be passed 

 under the small object-glass of a microscope, an 

 enormous and unwarrantable assumption may have 

 been made. 



It is with facts we have to do as the basis of our 

 reasoning ; and, with all deference to the learned and 

 approved Geologists, who have collected so many 

 valuable facts, their theories are not invariable, but 

 have often changed. Even now the Uniformitarian 

 theory of Lyell, and the prevalent Glacial hypothesis, 

 are being seriously invaded; towards which some 

 rather convincing facts have been adduced by 

 the Duke of Argyll. We may therefore without 

 presumption claim the liberty of looking at facts 

 with our own eyes. 



Flints, as we have said, are found abundantly in 

 parallel layers in the chalk cliffs ; on the face of 

 which they may be seen conspicuously, one super- 

 imposed above another; and where they have 

 manifestly been deposited at successive intervals, 

 one layer separated from another by a mas? of inter- 

 posed chalk. They are found also abundantly 

 scattered on the surface in other quarters, and in 



e Such appear to have "been the specimens which Ehrenberg 

 examined. So Humboldt says : " The beds of chalk which contain 

 two of those sauroid fishes and gigantic reptiles, and a whole 

 extinct world of corals and mussels, have been proved by Ehren- 

 berg's beautiful discoveries to consist of microscopic Polythalamia, 

 many of which still exist in our se is and in the middle latitudes 

 of the North Sea and Baltic." Cosmos, vol. i., p. 278. 



