Do you see the red sand in that field?
Then that is the lowest layer of a fresh world, so to speak; a world still younger than the oolites--the chalk world.
But that is not chalk, or anything like it.
No, that is what is called Greensand.
But it is not green, it is red.
I know: but years ago it got the name from one green vein in it, in which the "Coprolites," as you learnt to call them at Cambridge, are found; and that, and a little layer of blue clay, called gault, between the upper Greensand and lower Greensand, runs along everywhere at the foot of the chalk hills.
I see the hills now.

Are they chalk?
Yes, chalk they are: so we may begin to feel near home now.

See how they range away to the south toward Devizes, and Westbury, and Warminster, a goodly land and large.

At their feet, everywhere, run the rich pastures on which the Wiltshire cheese is made; and here and there, as at Westbury, there is good iron-ore in the greensand, which is being smelted now, as it used to be in the Weald of Surrey and Kent ages since.

I must tell you about that some other time.
But are there Coprolites here?
I believe there are: I know there are some at Swindon; and I do not see why they should not be found, here and there, all the way along the foot of the downs, from here to Cambridge.
But do these downs go to Cambridge?
Of course they do.