Sourced form the dust cover flaps (image provided with listing):

    "On a Piece of Chalk" by Thomas Henry Huxley was first delivered in 1868 as a lecture to the working men of Norwich during the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. A literary work of enduring excellence, it is here made available as a separate volume for the first time. Some of the finest writings on science accessible to the general reader have to do with everyday things, and this book is a classic example of such a discourse on a familiar object. It reveals Huxley’s natural gift for clear exposition linked with profundity of thought. In his talks to working men he understood instinctively how to take simple things - in this case a well in the earth or a piece of chalk in a carpenter’s pocket - and to proceed from the known, by some magical doorway of his own devising, back into the mist of long-vanished geological eras. The lecture is distinguished by beautiful writing, and Loren Eiseley?s fine editorship. In addition to supervising the preparation of the manuscript, Dr. Eiseley, the American literary naturalist, has contributed a biographical introduction and assembled a set of notes to illuminate the text for the modern reader. Rudolf Freund, the well-known artist of natural-history subjects, has lavishly illustrated the work. An Appendix (geological time chart), a selected bibliography, and an index add to the usefulness of this completely new edition.