A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



anywhere near Berkshire, and a great deal of ice work may take place in 

 a river without a glacial period. All that can at present be said is that 

 the Glacial period covers a portion, perhaps a large portion, of the time 

 during which the present surface features of Berkshire were carved out 

 and its gravels deposited. 



The valley gravel is very sandy in places and often contains an 

 abundant supply of water, which Mr. Blake remarks is of good quality 

 but very liable to pollution. 



The quartzite boulders above mentioned are very hard, and often 

 used as cobbles. 



CHALK RUBBLE. In some of the valleys in the chalk district and 

 on the sides of the chalk downs there have accumulated patches of 

 gravel consisting of fragments of chalk and irregular or broken flints. 

 In one. of these patches at Chilton, nearly 400 feet above the sea, Sir 

 Joseph Prestwich found a quantity of mammalian remains and land 

 shells, with which were associated two species of mollusca, Planorbis albus, 

 Ltnncea truncatula, which are of amphibious habit. He compares this 

 interesting deposit to the beds of angular rubble overlying the raised 

 beaches of Sangatte and Brighton. 1 



ALLUVIUM is the modern deposit of our rivers. It is muddy or 

 silty, and small sections may be seen in the river banks. 



In Lyson's Magna Britannia (1806), i. 192, it is noted that peat is 

 found in the vale of the Kennet on both sides of the river for several 

 miles above and below the town of Newbury. ' The stratum of peat lies 

 at various depths below the surface of the ground, and varies in thickness 

 from i to 8 or 9 feet. Horns, heads and bones of various animals have 

 been found in the peat.' 



Professor Rupert Jones in 1879 referred to a place near Newbury 

 where the peat had been excavated a comparatively few years previously, 

 and which had become entirely rilled up with fresh accumulations of 

 vegetable growth, Equisetum having been an active agent among the 

 plants. 2 



A well in London Road, Newbury, passed through 15 feet of 

 drift. At the bottom there was 3 feet of gravel, above it z feet of 

 peat and 6 feet of malm, and then more gravel forming the surface of 

 the ground. 



Speaking of the river Kennet near Hungerford and the soil around 

 that place Dr. Stukeley, writing as long ago as 1724, says : ' I have often 

 wished that a map of soils was accurately made, promising to myself that 

 such a curiosity would furnish us with some new notions of geography 

 and of the theory of the earth.' 3 An interesting and early suggestion in 

 favour of a geological map. 



1 J. Prestwich, Quart. Journ. Geol. Sac. (1882), xxxviii. 127 ; A. J. Jukes-Browne, Proe. Geol. 

 Atsoc. (1889-90), xi. 204. 



2 Proc. Geol. Assoc. (1879-80), vi. 188 ; see also T. R. Jones, A Lecture on the Geological History 

 of Netobury, Berks (8vo, London, 1854), where lists of the fossils are given. 



3 Itinerant* Curiosum (1724, fol. London), p. 60. 



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