and more certain of it as the years went on. But now we seem to
have a proof of it which is past gainsaying.

In the late survey of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, with a view
to laying down the electric telegraph between England and America,
by Lieutenant Maury of the American navy, a great discovery was
made. It was found that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, after you
have left the land a few hundred miles, is one vast plain of mud, of
some thirteen hundred miles in breadth. But here is the wonder; it
was found that at a depth, averaging 1,600 fathoms--9,600 feet--in
utter darkness, the sea floor is covered with countless millions of
animalcule-shells, of the same families, though not of the same
species, as those which compose the chalk.

At the bottom of a still ocean, then, the chalk was deposited. But
it took many an age to raise it to where Odiham chalk-pit now
stands.

But how was it raised?

By the upheaving force of earthquakes. Or rather, by the upheaving
force which causes earthquakes, when it acts in a single shock,
cracking the earth's crust by an explosion; but which acts, too,
slowly and quietly, uplifting day by day, and year by year, some
portions of the earth's surface, and letting others sink down; as in
the case of the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, which is now
1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean.

That these upheaving forces were much more violent than now, in the
earlier epochs of our planet, we have some reason to believe: but