When about ten miles from Blois I detected what I supposed was a large vein of chalk-pits.

Thus in one part you have ranges of chalk-hills, such as no other land knows, so regular, continuous, and tremendous withal, that you might think some army of archangelsand such might well abide therehad thrown them up as their vast and beautiful fortifications, being good Romans and believing in the value of such things, and not as the heathen despising them.

Dorothy is on deck, eagerly watching for the first glimpse of the chalk cliffs of old England.

"I can make a chalk mark for the trail I've struck to-day," he says; and then thoughtfully attacks the meal upon the table.

These chalk downs are covered, as indeed becomes things so old, with turf, the smoothest, softest, and sweetest under the sun.

Wid yer 'guide-man' on top sthradlin' yer timberr, watchin' the chalk-line and doin' the pull-up, and the otherr fellerr in the pit lookin' afther the haul-down, ye'll be able to play a chune wid that there whip-saw that'll make the serryphims sick o' plain harps."

But some of these remains prove the existence of reptiles of vast size in the chalk sea.

The gravels round you will be made up entirely of rolled chalk flints, and bits of beds immediately above or below the chalk.

Exhausted and half-paralyzed, de Chavasse perforce had to throw himself down these last ten feet, hardly pausing to think whether his head would or would not come in violent contact with one of the chalk boulders which stand out here and there in the flat sandy beach.

A huge white basin gaped in front of us, and I made out that it was a deserted chalk quarry, with brambles and ferns growing thickly all round the edges.

Then, as the coralline could not have fixed itself, if the Crania had been covered up with chalk mud, and could not have lived had itself been so covered, it follows, that an inch of chalk mud could not have accumulated within the time between the death and decay of the soft parts of the sea-urchin and the growth of the coralline to the full size which it has attained.

'Run for the cliff-side,' cried Elzevir to me; 'get close in, and they cannot touch thee,' and he made for the chalk wall.

Furthermore, plot in tragedy is more important than character; for in painting, a confused mass of colors gives less pleasure than a chalk drawing of a portrait.

The country round Didcot reminds one very much of the north of France: between Calais and Paris one notices the same chalk soil, the same flat arable fields, and the same old-fashioned farmhouses and gabled cottages.

From the age of twenty-five his fingers were enlarged and deformed by chalk-stones, which were discharged twice a year.

At the same time, were I asked which of all our English sports requires the greatest amount of perseverance, the supremest delicacy of hand, the most assiduous practice, and the most perfect control of temper, in order that excellence may be attained, I would unhesitatingly answer, "Dry-fly fishing on a real chalk stream"; and I would sooner have one successful day under such conditions than catch fifty trout by flogging a Scotch burn.

But soon the scene changes: the glorious valley Father Thames has scooped out for himself is left behind; we are crossing the chalk uplands.

The undulating downs and rounded coombs, covered with sweet-grassed turf, of our inland chalk country, have a peacefully domestic and mutton- suggesting prettiness, but can hardly be called either grand or beautiful.

Shying at a gypsy encampment, he rushed at headlong speed down a zigzagged chalk road, and at last pitched head-first over a declivity.

After that, I drew a Pentacle, so that each of the five points of the defensive star touched the chalk circle.

The progress of knowledge may, one day, enable us to deduce from such facts as these the maximum rate at which the chalk can have accumulated, and thus to arrive at the minimum duration of the chalk period.

Now for all the years to come he could hear the bell sound its warning and feel no qualm; never again need sit confined in a stuffy room, breathing chalk dust, and compel his errant mind to bookish abstractions.

There can be no one who has stood upon one of the great heights of the Downs north and south, upon Ditchling Beacon, Chanctonbury or Leith Hill, who, looking across the Weald, has not wondered what this country, lying between the two great chalk ranges, might be, what is its nature and its history and what part it has played in the great story of England.

Chalk talk stunts; illustrated by the author.

North-east of the town is a chalk bluff called Giant's Hill, with the figure of the famous "Cerne Giant," 180 feet in height, cut on its side.