’ 
187 
There can be little doubt that the rounded character of the 
sides of the channel is due to the fact that the weathering 
action, whatever it may have been, followed faithfully the 
original lines of consolidation of the rock—that is, assuming 
that the explanation offered of its concretionary character be 
the correct one. It is for that reason that I ventured on so 
lengthy a description of the rock itself. 
The rock weathers very rapidly, and, doubtless, some of the 
sand which fills the channel may be derived from the decom- 
position of the rock itself ; but the evidence is, I think, against 
this being so to any great extent. One of our students living 
close to Cerney, who has visited the cutting very frequently 
and regularly, tells me that one of the hardest and most 
stubborn masses became in a few weeks so much decomposed 
that pieces of it crumbled in the hand. 
Until some favouring circumstances occasion a further 
exposure of the bed, which, as we have seen, probably underlies 
all the southern end of the rising ground N.W. of South 
Cerney, it must remain a matter of conjecture as to whether 
9 shore action or the work of a stream excavated for the first 
_ time this remarkable channel. Could we find that other such 
_ channels break up this bed of rock in our vicinity, we should 
_ recognise its resemblance to many a well-known broken rocky 
shore, daily washed and altered by our own seas, just as I 
incline to believe the Middle Oolite sea once denuded and 
_ fashioned in so remarkable a manner this hard and intractable 
_ Kellaway’s Rock. 
02 
