Excerpt from The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, Vol. 60: September to December, 1863 Again, we must not reckon the time it would have taken for the river to cut down a whole valley through the solid chalk; for we do not know that the solid chalk was there to be cut down. The valley might have been formed ages be fore, and filled with earlier alluvium, which would have readily yielded to water action. Nor are we to count the time necessary to raise the bottom of the valley (now covered with peat) above the level of the sea; for a river's mouth chok ed with sand-banks and lined with marsh es is the very place where peat would most rapidly grow. Nor need we include the ima Degreesna ages requisite to change a very co d c mate (evidenced b ice-action) to a much warmer one, (evi enced by an Asiatic shell, ) and then back again to that of temperate France. The ice-action is a mere conjecture, which is not confirmed by the presence of any specially Arctic shells; and, even if it were more probable, it would be quite as fair to weigh the two facts to ether, and conclude that greater heat ant? Greater cold united in a climate only removed by its want of equilibrium from that of France at present. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.