Discourses : biological & geological : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Discourses : biological & geological : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ON A PIECE OF CHALK [1868] If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as “ chalk.” Not only here, hut over the whole county of Norfolk, the well-sinker might carry his shaft do-wn many hundred feet without coming to the end of the chalk; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material. Northward, the chalk may be followed as far as York.sliire ; on the .south coast it appears abruptly in the picture.sfjue wc.stern bays of Dorset, and breaks into the Needles of the Isle of Wight; while on the .shores of Kent it supplies that long VOL. VIII E 15