of other fossils, in the chalk-pit and in the gravel-pit, are
absolutely identical. The natural conclusion is, then, that the
gravel has been formed from the washings of the chalk. The white
lime of the chalk has been carried away in water by some flood or
floods; the heavier flints have been left behind.

Stop now one moment, and think. You all know how very few flints
there are in the chalk-pit, in proportion to the mass of chalk. You
all know what vast gravel-beds cover the country to the north, and
often to the thickness of many feet. Try and conceive, then, what a
much more vast mass of chalk must have been washed away, to leave
that vast mass of gravel behind it.--Conceive? It is past
conception. I will but give you two hints as to its probable size.

The chalk to the eastward, between here and Farnham, is a far
narrower and shallower band than anywhere else in England. Its
narrowest point is, I believe, beneath the bishop's palace at
Farnham, where it may be a hundred feet thick, instead of several
hundred, as it usually is in other parts of England. The cause of
this is, that the whole of the upper chalk has been washed away, to
form the gravel-beds to the north and east of us.

Again. Some of you may have been on the Hind Head or on Leith Hill,
and have looked southward over the glorious prospect of the rich
Weald, spread out five hundred feet below--a sight to make an
Englishman proud of his native land. Now, the mass of chalk which
has been carried away began behind you, at the Hogsback, and the
line of chalk-hills which runs to Boxhill, and stretched hundreds of
feet above your head as you stand on Hind Head or Leith Hill, right
over the old Weald of Sussex to the chalk of the South Downs. And