A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few
passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming
mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the
truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to
enable you to read, with your own eyes, to-night. Let me add, that
few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for
ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should
know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries
about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is
likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results,
to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful
universe, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who
is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.