ON THE COTTESWOLDS. 195 



bank. Here we spent two hours in careful and assiduous search. Not a 

 tuft of grass did we leave undisturbed, and, though it went to my heart 

 to do it, I pulled up by the roots whole plots of the lovely Saxifrage; 

 moss was peeled off and thoroughly investigated, and not a stone was left 

 unturned, yet all in vain. We obtained plenty of other land mollusks, 

 from Helix pomatia to Carychium minimum, but no trace of Clausilia Roiphii. 

 Once indeed my companion thought that he had discovered the object of 

 our search, and the shout of "Roiphii at last!" filled me with exultation; 

 but it would not do, the microscope revealed only a stunted and somewhat 

 rugose variety of C. bidens, which shell abounded in the finest condition 

 on all the neighbouring beech trees. 



Now I should hesitate to take upon myself to assert that because I and 

 others have failed in finding C. Roiphii, that it does not exist in this 

 locality, yet it is certainly somewhat remarkable that a critical species such 

 as this, should have been found in tolerable abundance by one individual 

 two years and a half ago, while later investigators, and amongst those 

 two at least possessed of no ordinary intimacy with the forms of mollusca, 

 added to great powers of research and discrimination, should have wholly 

 failed in finding even a single dead specimen. 



Disappointed in the object of our search, but not unrewarded, for we 

 brought away with us many very beautiful mollusks and a few insects, 

 we returned to the Black Horse, and seated in the sunlight in the garden 

 of the inn, we enjoyed our luncheon "al fresco." The rich and varied 

 landscape of the wide vale of the Severn, with Gloucester in the midst, 

 lay spread out like a map at our feet, over which the ever- changing lights 

 and shadows played with all the magical witchery of a dissolving view. 

 We had, however, a good deal more work in front of us, so putting our 

 horse into the shafts away we went, keeping the line of the Roman road 

 towards Cirencester, our object being the Beech Pike, some three miles 

 distant. 



At the summit of Birdlip Hill we left the highest stratum of the Inferior 

 Oolite, which from thence passes downwards through a succession of rubbly 

 freestone and pisolitic beds until they meet the Upper Lias, which, with the 

 Marlstone or Middle Lias forms the lower slopes of the hill, at the base of 

 which the Lower Lias makes its appearance, and extends far and wide over 

 the "Vale of Gloucester." Our road taking a south-easterly course, permitted 

 us by following the dip of the strata, to investigate some of the higher 

 beds, of which the plateau of the Cotteswolds followed in that direction 

 presents a gradually ascending series. 



We had not driven above a mile when we observed the brown band 

 of the fuller's earth in a quarry by the road- side, and the stone slates in 

 heaps by the way for roofing purposes, showed that we had got upon the 



