286 A Geological Sketch of the Valley of the Kernel. 



description of the numerous relics of the historic era, which have 

 been found from time to time in the alluvium of the valley, would 

 occupy too much space, and would moreover be somewhat out of 

 harmony with the subject of this paper. My aim has been to 

 show that the district, through which the Kennet flows, abounds 

 with geological phenomena, well deserving our contemplation and 

 study No one can make those phenomena matters of thought 

 and research without deriving from them mental profit as well as 

 pleasure ; for they open up to us a new vista of God's doings upon 

 earth, and enable us to trace, through ages immeasurably remote from 

 our own, the constant operation of the same Almighty power, 

 and the merciful care of the same unfailing Providence which now 

 surround us on every side. Verily the ground beneath us as well 

 as the heavens above us, proclaim the glory of God. Moreover 

 those geological records of the past prompt us to look forward 

 with renewed hope and trust to the future. They show us that, 

 although every creature has from the beginning been perfect in its 

 kind, there has yet been a constant progress from the lower to 

 hi-her forms of life. What the next advance will be revelation 

 alone declares to us; but the analogies of the past typify the 

 chan-es which lie before us in the mysterious future, echoing the 

 teaching of revelation, and aiding us to see and believe that we 

 who are nearest to the Great Creator in the scale of being, the 

 most recent and the most perfect of all his works, and who stand 

 midway as it were between the material and the spiritual world, 

 shall soon pass on to the inheritance of a higher and better life, 

 and " a new heaven and a new earth. 



Figures 1 2,4,5, are casts of wood blocks engraved for the Memoiis of the 

 Geolo<.ical Surve; of Great Britain, [Geology of Berkshire and Hampshire, sheet 

 No 12], and com-teously lent by the CouncU for the illustration of this paper. 



