GEOLOGY OF FOLKESTONE — TUE OAULT. 
129 
Some readers may doubtless wonder why I have wandered all 
along this pretty coast to Lympne's old ruined Roman castnim, 
which may appear, perhaps, to them to be as little connected with 
the Folkestone ganlt as the Mansion House with St. Pauls. Never- 
theless, there is some " reason in my madness." To the student 
embued with the love of nature the science of geology oflFers at once 
a sublime and unlimited expanse : he is in a transport of delight at 
every step with the knowledge he obtains. Every new opening and 
unfolding of the great book of the past overwhelms him with the 
immensity of the ideas and reflections which arise. He has acquired 
a new language, as it were, and can read the stirring stories recorded 
in the ponderous volume. To the world, occupied with its cares and 
trials, its anxieties, or its pleasures, the volume Hes open spread, but 
few or none read the language in which it is written. So when we 
isolate a locality, and attempt to teach its geology to the mass, we 
must treat our subject as a simple story— as one simple incident in 
the eventful past. We must have a oneness of purpose, a stm-dy 
tnith, which however we may attempt to gi-ace it, must be the lesson 
we have to teach. I have read in some old Danish writer's tale of 
one Trimalchio, who had his epitaph written on a sun-dial, that 
everybody who consulted it might read his name. With worthier 
pm-pose I hope to engrave some solemn truths on these pages, which, 
gentle reader, form our meeting-place, and by as pleasantly as I can, 
making a book of science one of amusement also, tempt you to come 
where these truths may be read. " A fisherman must bait his hooks 
to the taste of the little fishes, if he expects to catch them," and 
philosophers will never succeed by dry and arid language in tempt- 
ing those who seek for reci-eation and instruction after the labours 
and duties of life. For such I write, for those who with elastic 
tread and hearts lightened in hoHday time of their ordinaiy daily 
duties are seeking recreation in the innocent study of God's works 
and renovated health in the cool breezes from the sea ; these I pre- 
sume mt to know the geologic history of this blue clay band. For 
tlieir sakes it has been that I have rambled all along the shore to 
show them how the Gault forms one section of the great Cretaceous 
group, of which those other strata, although so different in their 
mineral character, fonn also parts. 
VOL. III. R 
