44 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
Ever siiice I knew it lias the Wan-en been jnst like this — almost 
unruffled in its solemn and stately aspect even by the stormy sea. 
Laud, water, sky, all too broadly grand to be speckled by the pigmy 
waves, whose sullen sounds the mighty cliffs but backward tlirow> 
" faultering into whispers low." Here then let us begin. 
There are older men than I that know the Warren well, and little 
is the change in it that they have seen. Like me they have grown 
from childliood into man ; and more than I, they have passed into 
cliildhood — dreary, sad, exhausting childhood, not fresh and young — 
again ; and yet httle is the change that they have seen. There were 
those tall white cliffs when they were boys ; there was that " wreck 
of ages" spread below ; there was that broad mass of cliffs, and that 
wide solemn glass of sea that daily showed their pure white forms ; 
there was that blue and slippery shore, those yellow sands, that 
rocky tract. Mounds of fallen chalk were piled against the cliffs be- 
yond, while only a casual block tarnished the verdant carpet of the 
Wai'ren. 
Long years have flitted by since man recorded any change in this 
serene and solemn scenery. Already the recording lines on the 
tombstone's " frail and crumbling frame" — the dead man's chronicle 
— touched by time ai'e half effaced. And then how slight the change 
recorded. Well may we look up at those old cliffs and think how 
old they are. 
But need I say that once, in time's long sequence of changes 
strange, those cliffs were Ocean's mud — deep sea-bed ooze. How 
long ago is that ? Older than the days when perhaps the brazen 
arms of conquering Romans clattered on this slippery strand ; older 
than the days of Phoenician traffic with our island's mines for tin ; 
older than the aboriginal Briton, or the hairy mammoths that in- 
habited this very land, ere Adam was, or human race began ; older 
than that great and three-fold age (the Tertiary) when living species 
fii'st appeared ; older than ten thousand times ten thousand ages is 
the rock-mass of those fair and stately cliffs ; and older still, older 
still by ages, is that dark blue clay that forms that shppery shore. 
And this blue clay it is that has made Folkestone one of the chief 
towns in the geological territory. Few geological localities have 
been longer or more justly celebrated in the annals of geology than 
