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 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 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