The existence of these people is forgotten even in the traditions of the oldest historical nations.  The name and fame of them had utterly vanished until a few years back; and the amount of physical change which has been effected since their day, renders it more than probable that, venerable as are some of the historical nations, the workers of the chipped flints of Hoxne or of Amiens [70] are to them, as they are to us, in point of antiquity.

But, if we assign to these hoar relics of long-vanished generations of men the greatest age that can possibly be claimed for them, they are not older than the drift, or boulder clay, which, in comparison with the chalk, is but a very juvenile deposit.  You need go no further than your own sea-board for evidence of this fact.  At one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, Cromer, you will see the boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must consequently have come into existence after it.  Huge boulders of chalk are, in fact, included in the clay, and have evidently been brought to the position they now occupy, by the same agency as that which has planted blocks of syenite from Norway side by side with them.

The chalk, then, is certainly older than the boulder clay.  If you ask how much, I will again take you no further than the same spot upon your own coasts for evidence.  I have spoken of the boulder clay and drift as resting upon the chalk.  That is not strictly true.  Interposed between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable matter.  But that layer tells a wonderful history.  It is full of stumps of trees standing as they grew.  Fir-trees are there with their cones, and hazel-bushes with their nuts; there stand the stools of oak and yew trees, beeches and alders.  Hence this stratum is appropriately called the “forest-bed.”

It is obvious that the chalk must have been up-heaved and converted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it.  As the boles of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land this formed remained in the same condition for long ages.  And not only do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but additional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotomuses and other great wild beasts, which it has yielded to the zealous search of such men as the Rev. Mr. Gunn.[71]

When you look at such a collection as he has formed, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the forest-bed is now the only trace, it is impossible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the tree-stumps.