These deposits lie in hollows and depressions of the chalk formation, and constitute what is termed the London basin. A similar series of materials occur in Hampshire, separated from the former by the upraised edges of the subjacent strata, which, cropping out in like manner on the south, inclose them also in a basin-shaped area. The same arrangement prevails across the channel, where a suite of rocks referable to the same age lie _within_ the chalks, and constitute the well-known Paris basin, whose remarkable remains were first brought to light from their tomb of ages in Montmartre by M. Brongniart and Cuvier, upward of thirty years ago. The Auvergne basins, in central France, are equally well characterized. And, stretching onward through southern Europe, the tertiary deposits occupy positions nearly similar; and all composed, with slight local variations, of kindred fossils and sediments. Geology has been compared to history. We also see how it embraces the whole range of physical geography, restoring the land-marks of the past, and presenting pictures of the earth’s surface which the mere traveler can no longer detect. The rolling Thames, with town, spire, and villa nestling in every slope, and tunnel, bridges, and “Crowded ports, Where rising masts an endless prospect yield,”— we seek in vain for on the geological map of the period. There were spice islands, with aromatic gales, palm trees, dates, turtles lazily pacing the sands, and crocodiles heavily climbing the banks, or plunging and gamboling in the deeper pools. A Polynesia, with a tropical climate and corresponding luxuriance of vegetable and animal life, occupied the intermediate regions of Europe and Western Asia. On the south and west a vast continent loomed over the main, whence, in part at least, the detrital matter of the several basins alluded to was derived; and there, too, in all probability, the source of the spasmodic action which successively elevated and depressed the bed of the sea on which were accumulating the tertiary deposits, and whose throes finally terminated in its own submergence, and upheaval of the south-east coast of Britain, and the whole of central Europe. Gulliver returned with a report of strange people, flying islands, and fertile descriptions of impossible monstrosities. Geology deals in a simple shifting of the scenes, new arrangements in the drama of creation, and is entitled to credit in its boldest assumptions, furnishing proof, as it abundantly does, from the existing wreck of those vanished realities to which it now assigns local habitation and name. London occupies the bottom of an ancient sea, whose spoils, six or seven hundred feet in thickness, are there to attest the fact; and for miles around, every excavation into the marine mass multiplies the evidence, and repeats the story of its existence.