You all know the history of the Nile; how, when the rains fall very heavily in March and April in the mountains of Abyssinia, the river comes rushing down and brings with it a load of mud which it spreads out over the Nile valley in Egypt.  This annual layer of mud is so thin that it takes a thousand years for it to become 2 or 3 feet thick; but besides that which falls in the valley a great deal is taken to the mouth of the river and there forms new land, making what is called the “Delta” of the Nile.  Alexandria, Rosetta, and Damietta, are towns which are all built on land made of Nile mud which was carried down ages and ages ago, and which has now become firm and hard like the rest of the country.  You will easily remember other deltas mentioned in books, and all these are made of the mud carried down from the land to the sea.  The delta of the Ganges and Brahmapootra in India, is actually as large as the whole of England and Wales, (58,311 square miles.) and the River Mississippi in America drains such a large tract of country that its delta grows, Mr. Geikie tells us, at the rate of 86 yards in year.

All this new land laid down in Egypt, in India, in America, and in other places, is the work of water.  Even on the Thames you may see mud-banks, as at Gravesend, which are made of earth brought from the interior of England.  But at the mouth of the Thames the sea washes up very strongly every tide, and so it carries most of the mud away and prevents a delta growing up there.  If you will look about when you are at the seaside, and notice wherever a stream flows down into the sea, you may even see little miniature deltas being formed there, though the sea generally washes them away again in a few hours, unless the place is well sheltered.

This, then, is what becomes of the earth carried down by rivers.  Either on plains, or in lakes, or in the sea, it falls down to form new land.  But what becomes of the dissolved chalk and other substances?  We have seen that a great deal of it is used by river and sea animals to build their shells and skeletons, and some of it is left on the surface of the ground by springs when the water evaporates.  It is this carbonate of lime which forms a hard crust over anything upon which it may happen to be deposited, and then these things are called “petrified.”

But it is in the caves and hollows of the earth that this dissolved matter is built up into the most beautiful forms.  If you have ever been to Buxton in Derbyshire, you will probably have visited a cavern called Poole’s Cavern, not far from there, which when you enter it looks as if it were built up entirely of rods of beautiful transparent white glass, hanging from the ceiling, from the walls, or rising up from the floor.  In this cavern, and many others like it,*(See the picture at the head of the lecture.) water comes dripping through the roof, and as it falls carbonate of lime forms itself into a thin, white film on the roof,