that layer tells a wonderful history.
It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew. Fir-trees are there
with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the
stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders. Hence this stratum is
appropriately called the "forest-bed."

It is obvious that the chalk must have been up-heaved and converted into
dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the boles of
some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no
less clear that the dry land this formed remained in the same condition
for long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks and
well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things,
but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant
remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotomuses and other great wild
beasts, which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the
Rev. Mr. Gunn.[71]

When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you
that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and
these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed
is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are
as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the
tree-stumps.

Thus there is a writing upon the walls of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso
runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be
impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and
remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the
great game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long it
remained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time
[72] brought its revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land,
with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden
away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank
gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge
masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now
restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered
among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things
endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved
glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once
more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and the elephant;
and at length what we call the history of Engl