ly
called the "forest-bed."

It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and converted into
dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the bolls of
some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less
clear that the dry land thus 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, hippopotamuses, and other great wild beasts,
which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the Rev. Mr.
Gunn. 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 wall 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 the
spoils of which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in
that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time 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 England 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