THE CHALK OF ENGLAND. 
CHAPTER I. 
A GENERAL ACCOUNT OE THE CHALK AS A WHOLE 
AND A HISTORY OF ITS SUBDIVISION INTO PARTS. 
The formation which geologists know as The Chalk consists for the 
most part of material which even those who are ignorant of Geology 
would call chalk, since this name (the softened form of the German 
kalk) has always been applied in England to the soft white or whitish 
limestone that is found over such large areas in the southern and 
eastern parts of the country. There are, however, within this great 
Chalk formation many varieties of chalk, some soft and some very 
hard ; thus there are beds which are locally called marl, malm, and 
clunck (all argillaceous varieties), and others known as rag, free¬ 
stone, and “ hurlock ” or “ harrock ” (all hard varieties). In Lincoln¬ 
shire and Yorkshire, moreover, nearly all the chalk is hard, or rather 
hard, and in these counties it is still provinciallv called kalk. 
The formation, considered as a whole, not only occupies a large 
surface area (see Plate 1), but underlies the whole of the London Basin 
and the whole area of Tertiary strata in Hampshire and Dorset. It 
must also extend eastward beneath the whole of the southern part 
of the North Sea, since it is known to underlie the Tertiary strata 
of south-eastern Belgium, and was traversed (with a thickness of 
304 feet) in a deep boring at Ostende. Southward from Sussex 
and Hampshire it extends beneath the eastern part of the English 
Channel into France, where it occupies the shore-line from near 
Etaples to Cap la Heve, near Havre. 
How far Chalk underlies the bed of the North Sea east of the coast 
of Yorkshire we have at present no means of knowing, but as the 
Chalk of that county is clearly part of a deep basin, it is quite possible 
that the eastern lip of this basin may rise into an anticline from the 
ridge of which the Chalk has been, for a certain distance, completely 
removed. * But even if this is the case the Chalk doubtless comes in 
again on the eastern side of this anticline, and plunges below the 
deep Tertiary basin of Holland ; its first appearance on the conti¬ 
nental shore being on the island of Heligoland. 
* If a submarine boring could be made at the southern end of the Dogger 
Bank some very interesting geological information might thereby be attained, 
and such an undertaking does not seem beyond the capacity of modern 
engineering. 
4219 . 
A 
