514 Prof. T. R. Jones — Geology of Kingsclere Valley. 



of the New Forest, where it dips below the Tertiary clays and sands 

 there preserved ; but it comes out again in the Isle of Wight, and 

 passes on beyond the water- worn hollow (called the Channel) in its 

 surface, to form a great portion of Northern France and other parts 

 of Europe. On the northern edge of the Kingsclere valley the Chalk 

 immediately dips at a high angle, leaving little more than its escarped 

 edge to form the surface there, and continues in a wide thick sheet 

 beneath the clays and sands that form the country drained by the 

 Enborne, until it emerges at Newbury and elsewhere along the 

 Kennet. Here it is masked by peat and gravel along the valley 

 bottom, but to the north and west it is soon found to constitute the 

 soil, except where "outliers," or remnants of the Tertiary strata, 

 chiefly Woolwich beds and London Clay, form hills and spurs near 

 the confluence of the Kennet and Lamborne. At Shaw brickfield, 

 one mile north-east of Newbury, is seen the best exposed section of 

 the Chalk, overlain by the Woolwich beds (with fossil oysters, leaves, 

 etc.), and these surmounted by the lower portion of the London Clay. 

 Here, however, these Tertiaries have suffered more loss by denuda- 

 tion than in the country south of Newbury, where broad patches of 

 a still higher formation, the " Bagshot Sands," constitute the heaths 

 and commons on the borders of Berks and Hants. These are based 

 on the London Clay, which is exposed along the deep-cut valleys of 

 the Enborne and its tributaries. This rests on the Woolwich beds, 

 noted for their plastic clay, which crops out at their edge as a narrow 

 riband along the northern foot of the Chalk hills of Hampshire, and as 

 a broader and more irregular area on the Chalk of the Kennet valley. 



The lecturer then alluded to the conditions of land and water 

 existing when the Chalk was formed as a deep-sea deposit, mainly 

 composed of innumerable microscopic shells, similar to such as still 

 live in deep seas at great depths, and form white calcareous ooze, 

 The different depths of this old sea, stretching east and west where 

 now Europe and Asia exist, were filled with different materials, and 

 hence the differences in Chalk beds and their equivalents in different 

 countries. The succeeding changes that prodiiced the fresh-water 

 Woolwich beds, and the subsequent marine London Clay and Bag- 

 shot Sands, were alluded to; and these sands, seen on the Wash 

 Common and elsewhere (as above mentioned), were noted as having 

 been formed in shallow water, and continuous with and equivalent 

 to other sea-deposits of deep-water origin. Thus these barren and 

 here non-fossiliferous sands are of the same age, and were formed in 

 the same sea, as the great Nummulitic limestone, which has not only 

 supplied material for the Pyramids of Egypt, but forms natural 

 buttresses to the Alps and Himalayas. 



The consideration of the gravel-beds, coating many parts of the 

 country, was not attempted for want of time ; but the great features 

 due to the crumpling of strata in course of the earth's contractions, 

 and the effect of water as a denuding agent in making and modify- 

 ing geographical contours, were specially treated of in the Professor's 

 resume of the facts and notions offered to his audience. 



Dr. Stevens, of St. Mary Bourne, thought that a vote of thanks 



