and dawned.

Thus you have within the limits of your own county, proof that the chalk
can justly claim a very much greater antiquity than even the oldest
physical traces of mankind. But we may go further and demonstrate, by
evidence of the same authority as that which testifies to the existence
of the father of men, that the chalk is vastly older than Adam himself.

The Book of Genesis informs us that Adam, immediately upon his creation,
and before the appearance of Eve, was placed in the Garden of Eden.
The problem of the geographical position of Eden has greatly vexed
the spirits of the learned in such matters, but there is one point
respecting which, so far as I know, no commentator has ever raised a
doubt. This is, that of the four rivers which are said to run out of it,
Euphrates and Hiddekel [73] are identical with the rivers now known by
the names of Euphrates and Tigris.

But the whole country in which these mighty rivers take their origin,
and through which they run, is composed of rocks which are either of the
same age as the chalk, or of later date. So that the chalk must not only
have been formed, but, after its formation, the time required for the
deposit of these later rocks, and for their upheaval into dry land, must
have elapsed, before the smallest brook which feeds the swift stream of
"the great river, the river of Babylon,"[74] began to flow.

Thus, evidence which cannot be rebutted, and which need not be
strengthened, though if time permitted I might indefinitely increase its
quantity, compels you to believe that the earth, from the time of the
chalk to the present day, has been the theatre of a series of changes as
vast in their amount, as they were slow in their progress. The area
on which we stand has been first sea and then land, for at least four
alternations; and has remained in each of these conditions for a period
of great length.

Nor have these wonderful metamorphoses of sea into land, and of land
into sea, been confined to one corner of England. During the chalk
period, or "cretaceous epoch," not one of the present great physical
features of the globe was in existence. Our great mountain ranges,
Pyrenees, Alps, Himalayas, Andes, have all been upheaved since the chalk
was deposited, and the cretaceous sea flowed over the sites of Sinai and
Ararat.

All this is certain, because rocks of cretaceous, or still later, date
have shared in the elevatory movements which gave rise to these m