s
deep. Prodigious the time during which it must have lain as a still
ocean-floor. For so minute are the living atomies which form the
ooze, that an inch, I should say, is as much as we can allow for
their yearly deposit; and the chalk is at least a thousand feet
thick. It may have taken, therefore, twelve thousand years to form
the chalk alone. A rough guess, of course, but one as likely to be
two or three times too little as two or three times too big. Such,
or somewhat such, is the fact. It had long been suspected, and more
than suspected; and the late discoveries of Dr. Carpenter and Mr.
Wyville Thompson have surely placed it beyond doubt.

Thus, surely, if we call the Oolitic beds one new world above the New
Red sandstone, we must call the chalk a second new world in like
wise.

I will not trouble the reader here with the reasons why geologists
connect the chalk with the greensands below it, by regular
gradations, in spite of the enormous downward leap, from sea-shore to
deep ocean, which the beds seem (but only seem) to have taken. The
change--like all changes in geology--was probably gradual. Not by
spasmodic leaps and starts, but slowly and stately, as befits a God
of order, of patience, and of strength, have these great deeds been
done.

But we have not yet done with new worlds or new prodigies on our way
to London, as any Londoner may ascertain for himself, if he will run
out a few miles by rail, and look in any cutting or pit, where the
surface of the chalk, and the beds which lie on it, are exposed.

On the chalk lie--especially in the Blackheath and Woolwich district-
-sands and clays. And what do they tell us?

Of another new world, in which the chalk has been lifted up again, to
form gradually, doubtless, and at different points in succession, the
shore of a sea.

But what proof is there of this?

The surface of the chalk is not flat and smooth, as it must have been
when at the bottom of the sea. It is eaten out into holes and
furrows, plainly by the gnawing of the waves; and on it lie, in many
places, large rolled flints out of chalk which has been destroyed,
beds of shore-shingle, beds of oysters lying as they grew, fresh or
brackish water-shells standing as they lived, bits of lignite (fossil
wood half turned to coal), and (as in Katesgrove pits at Reading)
leaves of trees. Proof enough, one would say, that the chalk had
been raised till part of it a