THE EH^TIC EOCKS OF PYLLE HILL, BRISTOL. 215 



is made in them, students who give their attention to this 

 department of British geology are glad to avail themselves 

 of the opportunity thus afforded of studying these interesting 

 rocks whilst the opportunity lasts. 



The section I am about to describe is the one on the 

 Bristol Relief Railway, which is seen on looking over the 

 west side of the bridge over this railway on the Bath road, 

 at Pylle Hill (Totterdown), Bristol. Although the general 

 sequence of the beds may still be seen in the steeply-sloping 

 bank on the south side of the line, the details are now 

 obscured ; the section, too, is now practically inaccessible to 

 the geologist, and as time goes on it will become more and 

 more defaced by the action of the weather. Almost in a 

 line with this section, a little further west, on the main 

 Bristol and Exeter Railway, there is another and a much 

 older section, practically a counterpart of the one now nnder 

 consideration, which was described by the late Charles 

 Moore — but necessarily very briefly and inadequately — in 

 an abstract of a paper read by him before the Geological 

 Society in the year I860.* 



The rail wa}^- cutting in which the section I now describe 

 is exposed runs east and west, or approximately along the 

 strike of the beds — the dip being S.S.E., at an angle of 3° 

 or 4°. In the line of section, therefore, the beds are nearly 

 horizontal, but they have a very gentle synclinal arrange- 

 ment. 



The general succession of the" beds at Pylle Hill is as 

 follows : — 



From the level of the line to a height of about forty feet 

 above it come the variegated red and green marls of the 

 Upper Keuper division of the Trias. These red and green 



* On the so-called Wealden beds at Linksfiekl, and the Beptili- 

 ferous Sandstones of Elgin. Quart. Journ. Geol. JSoc, vol. xvi. p. 445. 



