443 
I'ar away from tins area were the margins of the Chalk sea ; 
but the succeeding strata, proved to us in the well dug for 
^ir kdmund Lacon’s brewery at Yarmouth, tell again of shallower 
sea-deposits in Eocene times, when we reach the dawn of the 
present life on the earth. These deposits— mostly of a clayey 
nature— were brought down from a land clothed with a tropical 
vegetation, and whose banks and waters teemed with Serpents 
Crocodiles, lurtles, and Tapir-liko mammals, some of which per- 
chance, together with the Nautilus and other ]\rolIu3ca, now lie 
entombed two or three hundred feet beneath the sands of 
Yarmouth. Although the occurrence of these soft and yielding 
deposits may have had some induence on the formation of the 
low-lying tracts of East Norfolk, nowhere do they make their 
appearance at its surface. 
Iho next period, called the Pliocene, with which wo may include 
tlie later stages of the Eocene, was by no means unimportant in the 
history of our scenery. Instead of tlie deposit of new material wo 
have the upheaval of the strata that had been formed ;-land usurped 
the area previously occupied by the waters, and this took place 
over the greater part of the country. 
The Chalk in Norfolk was slightly tilted, and brought above the 
sea-level, gradually perhaps, but in the end so much, that the Red 
Chalk of Hunstanton, originally more than a thousand feet beneath 
the ocean bottom, was lifted to several feet above its surface-level. 
At this time there m.ay indeed have been land a thousand feet 
high in West Norfolk, and then no doubt the Chalk was continuous 
with that which now forms the wolds of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. 
This much is known, that at least a thousand feet of Chalk has been 
worn away in West Norfolk; but whether the denudation took place 
by degrees as the land was being upraised, or chiefly after it had 
been upraised, avo are not in a position to sav. 
What has become of the material ? We know that in Buckin- 
hamshire, Hertfordshire, and Berkshire, where the Chalk-with-liints 
has been for a^s exposed at the surface, the influence of acidu- 
lated water— rain-water and springs holding carbonic acid gas in 
solution has been potent in dissolving and eroding the Chalk, 
carrying away its calcareous matter, and leaving the flints and 
insoluble substances behind. In those counties, as Mr. Whitaker 
has pointed out, the Chalk hills are largely covered with 
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