Not a fossil is to be found in them for miles.
Save a few shells, I believe, near Pirbright, there is not a hint
that a living being inhabited that doleful sea.
But do not suppose, gentlemen and ladies, that we have yet got our
gravel-pit made, or that the way-worn pebbles of which it is
composed are near the end of their weary journey. Poor old stones!
Driven out of their native chalk, rolled for ages on a sea-beach,
they have tried to get a few centuries' sleep in the Eocene sands on
the top of the chalk hills behind us, while the London clay was
being deposited peacefully in the tropic sea below; and behold, they
are swept out, once more, and hurled pell-mell upon the clay, two
hundred feet over our heads.
Over our heads, remember. We have come now to a time when Hartford
Bridge Flats stretched away to the Beacon Hill, and many a mile to
the south-eastward--even down into Kent, and stretched also over
Winchfield and Dogmersfield hither.
What broke them up? What furrowed out their steep side-valleys?
What formed the magnificent escarpment of the Beacon Hill, or the
lesser one of Finchamstead Ridges? What swept away all but a thin
cap of them on the upper part of Dogmersfield Park, another under
Winchfield House; another at Bearwood, and so forth?
The convulsions of a third world; more fertile in animal life than
those which preceded it: but also, more terrible and rapid, if
possible, in its changes.
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