partly of water--at any rate, so far as any period
of which we have geological knowledge is concerned. There _must_,
therefore, always have existed, at some part or another of the
earth's surface, areas where no deposition of rock was going on,
and the proof of this is to be found in the well-known phenomenon
of "_unconformability_." Whenever, namely, deposition of sediment
is continuously going on within the limits of a single ocean, the
beds which are laid down succeed one another in uninterrupted
and regular sequence. Such beds are said to be "conformable," and
there are many rock-groups known where one may pass through fifteen
or twenty thousand feet of strata without a break--indicating
that the beds had been deposited in an area which remained
continuously covered by the sea. On the other hand, we commonly
find that there is no such regular succession when we pass from
one great formation to another, but that, on the contrary, the
younger formation rests "unconformably," as it is called, either
upon the formation immediately preceding it in point of time,
or upon some still older one. The essential physical feature of
this unconformability is that the beds of the younger formation
rest upon a worn and eroded surface formed by the beds of the
older series (fig. 18); and a moment's consideration will show
us what this indicates. It indicates, beyond the possibility of
misconception, that there was an interval between the deposition
of the older series and that of the newer series of strata; and
that during this interval the older beds were raised above the
sea-level, so as to form dry land, and were subsequently depressed
again beneath the waters, to receive upon their worn and wasted
upper surface the sediments of the later group. During the interval
thus indicated, the deposition of rock must of necessity have
been proceeding more or less actively in other areas. Every
unconformity, therefore, indicates that at the spot where it
occurs, a more or less extensive series of beds must be actually
missing; and though we may sometimes be able to point to these
missing strata in other areas, there yet remains a number of
unconformities for which we cannot at present supply the deficiency
even in a partial manner.

[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Section showing strata of Tertiary age
(a) resting upon a worn and eroded surface of White Chalk (b),
the stratification of which is marked by lines of flint.]

It follows from the