If all the points at which true chalk occurs were circumscribed, they would lie within an irregular oval about three thousand miles in long diameter—­the area of which would be as great as that of Europe, and would many times exceed that of the largest existing inland sea—­the Mediterranean.

Thus the chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth’s crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.  The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domestic and mutton-suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either grand or beautiful.  But on our southern coasts, the wall-sided cliffs, many hundred feet high, with vast needles and pinnacles standing out in the sea, sharp and solitary enough to serve as perches for the wary cormorant, confer a wonderful beauty and grandeur upon the chalk headlands.  And in the East, chalk has its share in the formation of some of the most venerable of mountain ranges, such as the Lebanon.

* * * * *

What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? and whence did it come?

You may think this no very hopeful inquiry.  You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification.

If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a “piece of chalk” for my discourse.  But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest.

A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk.  Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, to-night.

[Illustration:  MICROSCOPIC SECTION OF CHALK.

(Magnified nearly 300 times.)

1.  Textularia. 2.  Globigerina. 3.  Rotalia. 4.  Coccoliths.]

Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves.  I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches’ pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man’s relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of nature.