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 mountain
chains; and may be found perched up, in some cases, many thousand feet
high upon their flanks. And evidence of equal cogency demonstrates that,
though, in Norfolk, the forest-bed rests directly upon the chalk, yet
it does so, not because the period at which the forest grew immediately
followed that at which the chalk was formed, but because an immense
lapse of time, represented elsewhere by thousands of feet of rock, is
not indicated at Cromer.
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