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
the subject is too long a one to enter on now; and all I can say is,
that you must conceive for yourself the chalk gradually brought up
to the surface, worn away along a shifting shoreline by the waves of
the sea, and covered in shallow water by the clays and sands on
which Odiham stands; and which compose the earliest part of our
second world.

A second world; a new world. We can use no weaker expression. When
we compare the chalk with the strata which lie upon it, we can only
call them a complete new creation.

For not only were they deposited in shallow water; a great deal of
them, probably, near river-mouths, and by the force of violent
currents, as the irregularity of their lower bed proves: but there
is hardly a plant or animal found in the chalk itself, which is
found in the gravels, sands, or clays above it. The shells are all
new species; unseen before in this planet. The vegetables, as far
as we know them, are all different from anything found in the chalk,
or in the beds below it. God Almighty, for His own good pleasure,
has made all things new. It is a very awful fact; but it is a very
certain one. Several times, in the history of our planet, has the
Lord God fulfilled the words of the Psalmist:

"Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return again to their
dust.

"Thou sendest forth thy breath, they are made: and thou renewest
the face of the earth."

But in no instance, perhaps, is the gulf so vast; is the leap from
one world to another so sheer, as that between the chalk and the
London clay above it.

But how do I know that there was a shore-line here? And how do I
know that the chalk was covered with sand-beds?

I know that there was a shore-line here, from this fact. If you
will look at the surface of the chalk, where the sands and clays lie
on it, you will find that it is not smooth; that the beds do not
rest conformably on each other, as if they had been laid down
quietly by successive tides, while the chalk below was still soft
mud. So far from it, the chalk must have become hard rock, and have
be