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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1829 Excerpt:... sheep, afford examples. Beech is the tree best fitted for a chalky soil. The Chiltern hills in Oxfordshire, were anciently covered with thickets and woods of beech, which afforded harbour to banditti. Hence the steward of the Chiltern hundreds, formerly an employment under the crown, has become a nominal office, which members of parliament take under a fiction of law, in order to vacate their seats. The lower beds of the chalk formation, are with few exceptions filled with water, which percolating from above is arrested by the subsoil of blue clay. Thus are formed the springs and rivulets which issue near the foot of every chalk hill. Most of the rivers which traverse this formation, rise in the older rocks beyond its escarpment, and flow along the valleys that are excavated across its chain. The chalk is often nearly dry to a great depth; the well sunk 400 feet at Royston in Hertfordshire, afforded no water. For particular views of the sections of the chalk formation, throughout England, I refer to Messrs. Conybeare and Phillip's excellent work, p. 89, et seq. On the coasts of France opposite to the English chalk country, a series of sections may be observed almost exactly answering both in character and position to those now briefly traced, but fully described in the above work, demonstrating that the constituent strata had been continuous at some ancient epoch. The corresponding points between ENGLISH AND FRENCH CHALK. 291 the cliffs on each side of the Straits of Dover are too remarkable for us to esteem their former continuity an hypothesis. That the connecting mass has been apparently washed away by an irruption of the sea, may be inferred from the fact that the chalk without flints on the west of Dover is not less than 50 feet in thickness, while th...