ROSS DISTRICT. 5 



3. Carboniferous (mountain) limestone, with limestone shale 

 tmderlj'ing. 



4. Yellow sands with red bands, and red marls. 



5. Old Eed conglomerate, and marls and sandstones. 



6. Eed sandstones of Eoss district, as below the Eoyal Hotel. 



I have often searched the Old Eed quarries of the Eoss district for 

 fossils, but hitherto imsuccessfully. There are quarries at Pengethly 

 and Hentland where the new parsonage house is buUt of excellent 

 stone by the Eev. "W. Poole, Hare wood, and many other localities. 

 The railroad also cut through a considerable amount of Old Eed rock, 

 but I never succeeded in obtaining, or even hearing of a fossil. The 

 Carboniferous limestone of the Dowards is not very fossiliferous, but 

 if watched by geologists of the neighbourhood, would, I doubt not, 

 yield many characteristic remains. In my few passing visits with 

 friends and brother naturalists, I have noted various brachiopodous 

 shells, such as the common spirifers, Producti and Ehynconellidae, 

 both at the Great Doward and above Whithall, near Eoss. At the 

 Great Doward I once obtained a portion of a large Ichthyodorulite, 

 or fish spine, shewing that such relics of former life are to be found 

 if searched for. There is a hone bed full of fish teeth, and defences, 

 at the base of the carboniferous strata, at Bristol ; and Lord 

 Ducie found it at Tortworth ; does it exist in the Eoss district, and 

 lias any one ever searched for it 1 



The Millstone grit of Dean Forest may be easily mistaken for the 

 Old Eed conglomerate, as they are both pebble beds. A little 

 observation, however, will enable the geologist to detect the difierence 

 at a glance, as the matrix of the Millstone grit is far more crystalline 

 than that of the other. I observed when I was last in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Eoss, that travelleid boulders of Millstone grit, and Old 

 Eed conglomerate, also of coal measure sandstone, rested against strata 

 to which they did not appertain, high up on the flanks of the hill 

 above Eishop's Wood house, and towards Howie Green. My 

 attention was di-awn to this fact by LIrs. Partridge, of Bishop's 

 Wood, and the attention of residents in the neighbourhood should 

 be directed to these phenomena, Howie Hill, Egypt, and Howie 

 Green are on an outlyer of millstone grit and the lowest coal mea- 

 sures, separated from the equivalent carboniferous strata at Euardean. 

 The intervening tract thus gives a good example of partial denuda- 



