When we consider that the remains of more than three thousand distinct
species of aquatic animals have been discovered among the fossils of the
chalk, that the great majority of them are of such forms as are now met
with only in the sea, and that there is no reason to believe that any
one of them inhabited fresh water--the collateral evidence that the
chalk represents an ancient sea-bottom acquires as great force as the
proof derived from the nature of the chalk itself. I think you will now
allow that I did not overstate my case when I asserted that we have
as strong grounds for believing that all the vast area of dry land, at
present occupied by the chalk, was once at the bottom of the sea, as we
have for any matter of history whatever; while there is no justification
for any other belief.
No less certain it is that the time during which the countries we now
call south-east England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Egypt, Arabia,
Syria, were more or less completely covered by a deep sea, was of
considerable duration. We have already seen that the chalk is, in
places, more than a thousand feet thick. I think you will agree with me
that it must have taken some time for the skeletons of animalcules of a
hundredth of an inch in diameter to heap up such a mass as that.