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," 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 mountain
chains; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feet
high upon their flanks. And evidence of equal cogency demonstrates that,
though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet it
does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediately
followed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immense lapse