The history of this great Wealden island to the south-east of us is obscure enough; but a few general facts, which bear upon our gravel- pit, I can give you. I must begin, however, ages before the Wealden island existed; when the chalk of which its mass was composed was at the bottom of a deep ocean. We know now what chalk is, and how it was made. We know that it was deposited as white lime mud, at a vast sea-depth, seemingly undisturbed by winds or currents. We know that not only the flint, but the chalk itself, is made up of shells; the shell of little microscopic animalcules smaller than a needle's point, in millions of millions, some whole, some broken, some in powder, which lived, and died, and decayed for ages in the great chalk sea. We know this, I say. We had suspected it long ago, and become more and more certain of it as the years went on. But now we seem to have a proof of it which is past gainsaying. In the late survey of the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, with a view to laying down the electric telegraph between England and America, by Lieutenant Maury of the American navy, a great discovery was made. It was found that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, after you have left the land a few hundred miles, is one vast plain of mud, of some thirteen hundred miles in breadth. But here is the wonder; it was found that at a depth, averaging 1,600 fathoms--9,600 feet--in utter darkness, the sea floor is covered with countless millions of animalcule-shells, of the same families, though not of the same species, as those which compose the chalk. At the bottom of a still ocean, then, the chalk was deposited. But it took many an age to raise it to where Odiham chalk-pit now stands. But how was it raised? By the upheaving force of earthquakes. Or rather, by the upheaving force which causes earthquakes, when it acts in a single shock, cracking the earth's crust by an explosion; but which acts, too, slowly and quietly, uplifting day by day, and year by year, some portions of the earth's surface, and letting others sink down; as in the case of the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, which is now 1,300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean. That these upheaving forces were much more violent than now, in the earlier epochs of our planet, we have some reason to believe: but the subject is too long a one to enter on now; and all I can say is, that you must conceive for yourself the chalk gradually brought up to the surface, worn away along a shifting shoreline by the waves of the sea, and covered in shallow water by the clays and sands on which Odiham stands; and which compose the earliest part of our second world. A second world; a new world. We can use no weaker expression. When we compare the chalk with the strata which lie upon it, we can only call them a complete new creation.