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.