THE EH^TIC ROCKS OF PYLLE HILL, BEISTOL. 219 



Paper Shales. Sucli features as these, coupled with the 

 fact that in crossing this line we pass upwards from a rock- 

 series which is uniformly destitute of organic remains, and 

 which merges into a great unfossiliferous series below, into 

 a rock-series which contains numerous and varied organic 

 remains, indicate that we are here on the junction line of 

 two formations, and that the " Tea-green Marls " belong to 

 the Keuper and not to the Rheetic series, and that they can- 

 not properly even be looked upon as " passage-beds " from 

 one to the other. The authors who first determined the 

 presence of Rhcetic rocks in England — Mr. Charles Moore* 

 and Dr. Thomas Wrightf — took this view, and drew the line 

 between the Rhaetics and the Trias at the base of the Avicula 

 conto7'ta shales. In his original description of the section at 

 Garden Cliff, Westbury-on- Severn, in 1865, Mr. Etheridge 

 placed the " Tea-green Marls " in the Rhastic series, J but in 

 1871 he appears to have been in some doubt on the subject, 

 for in a paper given by him to the Cardiff Naturalists' 

 Society in that year, we find in the generalized table at the 

 end that the " Tea-green Marls " are classed with the Keu- 

 per, whilst in another part of the same paper, and in the 

 sections there given of Garden Cliff, Westbury, and Penarth 

 Cliffs, they are included in the Rhsetic series. § As I have 

 already stated, the Geological Survey authorities have been 

 in the habit of classing these " Tea-green Marls " with the 

 overlying black " Paper Shales," and also, I may add, with 

 the true " White Lias," under the common term, " Penarth 

 or Rhsetic Beds." || That is to say, beds which in my view 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xvii. p. 483. 



•f Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xvi. p. 374. 



+ Proc. Cotteswold Naturalists'' Field Club, vol. iii. (1865) p. 218. 



§ Trans. Cardiff Naturalists'' Society, vol. iii., pt. ii. (1870-71) pp. 

 39, 59. 



II Mem. Geol. Sarv., Geology of East Somerset and the Bristol Coal- 

 fields, p. 69. 



