606 LIEUT.-COL, H. H. GODWIN-AUSTEN ON THE 
What I have endeavoured to describe, together with the details 
of the sections at different points, is sufficient, I think, to show that 
there are several questions of extreme interest pertaining to these high- 
level gravels and sands of the ancient Wey. They are :—1st. What 
was their relation to the topography of the country in the past ? 
2nd. What relation do they bear to the outlines of the neighbouring 
country at the present day? 3rd. What is their age? 
As the cutting shallows at Watford Farm (fig. 8, facing p. 612), 
reddish clay occurs at the bottom. With a few pebbles and green 
flints, it is here the lowest of the Reading beds. The gravel and 
sands seem to reach about 80 yards beyond, gradually thinning out. 
Further on, at 14 miles 52 chains, near the next bridge over the 
line, the clay shell-bed was seen near the bottom on the north- 
western side, while close by, on the other side, the basement-bed of 
the London Clay, consisting of the usual brown loam, but here con- 
taining a few shells and with black flint-pebbles at the bottom, occurs 
overlying the shelly clay of the Woolwich beds, here more than 3 feet 
thick. 
The beds sink to the north-east, so that very soon only London 
Clay is to be seen. (For further details of the Eocene here, see 
main section, fig. 8, eastern half.) 
These questions could, I feel, be better treated by our older geo- 
logists, who have devoted years of their lives to the geology, particu- 
larly the Tertiary and Post-tertiary geology, of this part of England 
and the neighbouring continent—Messrs. Prestwich, Evans, Morris, 
Rupert Jones, and others, and among them my father, Mr. Robert 
Godwin-Austen. Many a mile has been walked in the examination of 
the country, and vast stores of knowledge and unpublished experience 
thus acquired, of which I possess but a fractional part, have been 
brought to bear on this subject. I cannot hope ever to be able to 
examine and study what so many geologists have seen and described, 
and many of the sections so described will probably never be exposed 
again. We can, however, all assist in the work. It is only by 
piecing together all the scraps of information collected from time to 
time in the few good sections accidentally presented to us that we 
can arrive at any thing like a history of the sequence of events in 
Post-tertiary, Glacial, and Post-glacial times. Even in these recent- 
looking sands we are brought face to face with very considerable 
changes in this part of England, and a great lapse of time that has 
elapsed since those changes were effected. In these later periods of 
the earth’s history the mind seems to realize the length of bygone 
time even more vividly than when we are dealing with older epochs. 
We have here the very unusual opportunity afforded us of seeing 
a considerable exposure of an old land-surface unaltered by the 
effects of denudation during the last phase of extreme cold con- 
ditions; wecan to a certain extent reconstruct the features that the 
country presented previous to that denudation, and which were 
evidently very different from those of to-day, although the main 
drainage was the same (see fig. 9, facing p. 612). 
