By the Bev. John Adams. 269 



interesting lessons respecting the mode in which the Great Creator 

 prepared this earth of ours to become the dwelling-place of man. 



It will be seen, by taking a mere birds'ej'e-view of the panorama, 

 that it consists of several distinct formations. Just as in some 

 ivy-clad ruin we may often trace the work and style of many ages, 

 — here a fragment of Roman masonry, there a characteristic arch, 

 of Saxon times, — on this side a zigzag moulding of the Norman 

 age, and on that a graceful column of early English art ; so, in the 

 scene before us, we may discover many geological features perfectly 

 distinct from each other in age and character. The valley, e.g.y 

 is covered with alluvium, gravel and peat ; all of comparatively 

 recent origin. The escarpments of the slopes on either side of the 

 valley have generally a deposit of clay, overlying the chalk ; the 

 high ground on the north and south is covered with beds of gravel 

 overlying the clay ; which gravel, though often undistinguishable 

 from that of the valley, is, as will presently be seen, of much, 

 greater age ; and the chalk hills in the distance are of far higher 

 antiquity still. 



Let us go back in imagination to the time when those primaeval 

 bills emerged from their parent sea ; and endeavour with such, 

 indications as the different strata furnish, to picture to ourselves 

 some of the great geological changes which have occurred in this 

 neighbourhood since that remote period. The present distribution 

 of land and water, it need hardly be said, is the result of very 

 recent causes. During the whole of the tertiary epoch, the phy- 

 sical geography of the globe was continually fluctuating ; ancient 

 continents gradually disappearing, and new islands rising and 

 expanding above the waters. At the commencement of this period 

 when the chalk area, after having been for ages dry land, was 

 slowly subsiding to its old level beneath the sea, the waves swept 

 into a depression of the great cretaceous continent, and in course 

 of time formed a bed of light-coloured sand and greenish flints, 

 which has been designated the Thanet sands, from the circumstance 

 of their being well developed in the isle of Thanet. This formation 

 is found chiefly in Kent and Essex, and extends only a ie\r miles 

 west of London. Its fossils, of which there are about forty species, 



