Gunn.[71]
When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you
that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and
these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed
is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are
as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the
tree-stumps.
Thus there is a writing upon the walls of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso
runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be
impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and
remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the
great game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long it
remained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time
[72] brought its revenges" in those days as in these. That dry land,
with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden
away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank
gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge
masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now
restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered
among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things
endured we know not, but at length it came to an end.
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