hin 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 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