To anyone who has had the patience to read through the preceding pages and to reach these concluding remarks, it must be obvious that geology is not merely a pastime for specialists. It does not take half a dozen college and university degrees to collect rocks and minerals, and to understand what they mean; or to appreciate not alone the beauty, but also the long and involved, yet logical, origin of scenery; or to comprehend from a rock-cut or cliff the vast changes which have occurred in the course of geologic time; or to grasp the current significance, as well as the historical importance, of such rock and mineral products as the trap, the limestone, the pyrite, the lead veins, the soapstone, the varved clay, the gravel banks.

Whether one’s interests are practical, historical, acquisitive, esthetic, philosophical or scientific, the geological features of the Connecticut Valley possess the variety to gratify them all. One must indeed be blind if he cannot find something of interest—a hobby—even a profession in the geological display spread before him in central Massachusetts. Let it not be thought that this little volume tells the whole story. On the contrary, its authors expect to have a difficult time justifying their sins of omission, more particularly because many of the omissions have been conscious and deliberate. But they trust they have left for the reader a wealth of features which he can make his own by right of discovery. For it will not take him very long to penetrate the fourth dimension of geologic time more deeply and intimately than is possible in the pages of a book.