APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS

Hokitika Guardian, 28 January 1932, Page 1

APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS

There is a writing upon the wall of cliffs at Cromer, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority which cannot be impeached, that the ancient sen-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forma, stocked with, the great game and spoils of which have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot be said ; but “the whirngig of time brought its revenges'’ in those days as in these. That dry land, with the holies and teeth of ■ generations of long lived 'ej-ephantis, hidden away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with huge masses of drift- and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme norm, paddled about where birds had twit- j tered among the topmost twigs of 1 the fir-trees. How long this state of .things endured we know not, but m length it came to an end. The i-p-Imaved glacial mini hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grow once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the reindeer and) the elephant; and at length what we call the history of England dawned.