212 



IN rESCENDIKO ORDER. 

 FT IN. REMARKS. 



24. Very hard rock 1 Guineas. A very remark- 



able bed, here and 



Total 26 6 there like Forest mar- 

 ble. Masses of fossils 

 on the surface. Sau- 

 rians, fish scales, gress- 

 lya, avicula cygnipes, 

 carrtinia, hemipedina 

 Toraesii, bryozoa, casts 

 of plants like reeds or 

 grasses, corals. 



2.5. Yellow clay. 



26. Clay, with white, stony no- 



dules Masses of estherla. 



27. Dark clay. 



These sections were drawn up by my friends Messrs. Kiishaw and Tomes, 

 and quoted also by Dr. Wright ib his memoir in the Palaeontogi'aphical ; 

 but I have not strictly adhered to the remarks on the fossils by the latter, 

 but have made such alterations and additions as I considered necessary. I 

 need not quote here my own published sections on the same strata at Bidford 

 and Temple Grafton, S. W. and N. W. of Binton, because they tally for the 

 most part with the one at WUmcote, and the latter has the advantage of giving 

 the entire thickness of the lower Lias, and proving the fact of its being 

 immediately succeeded by the Rhoetic beds ; for although my lamented friend, 

 Hugh Strickland, long ago discovered the Bone bed near Binton, and I have 

 since found its representative still more to the north, the absolute sequence 

 of the beds in due order beneath the lowest stratum of lias was not clearly 

 made out, until a shaft was sunk for this special object. As a general rule, 

 these basement beds pass into the Ehcetic zone, and are well exhibited at 

 Wanclode cliff, Westbury, and Aust, on the Severn, in Gloucestershire. The 

 higher ground round Wilmcote and Binton is capped by the " Lima beds," so 

 that if an entire section was exposed we should have a tolerably complete 

 representation of the more calcareous portions of the lower Lias down to the 

 red marl. The district is more or less affected by small and often local faults, 

 and one curious change in contiguous strata is worthy of note in one of the 

 most westerly sections at Wilmcote. All the insect beds thin out and scarcely 

 amount to three layers, the top band being irregular and shattered ; a thick 

 mass of shale succeeds, undivided, as elsewhere, by limestones, and below are 

 three beds of limestone, viz., the firestone, with Ostrea liassica, but of a 

 very different character. The limestones are of much economical value, being 

 largely employed for flooring, paving, gravestones, and walls, and making 

 hydraulic cement at Bltesrs. Greaves and Kirshaw's quarries, at Wilmcote. 

 They make good paving stones, many of the slabs raised being of large size, 

 but they do not weather well when used for gravestones. Some of them 

 might be profitably used for lithographic purposes, and with this view I sent 

 up some specimens to the Exhibition in 1851. With the exception of the 

 Insects and fragments of plants, the fossils are entirely marine, two species 

 of ammonites, a planorbis, and a Johnsoni being abundant and oharacteiistic, 

 and occur both in the shales and the limestones, but not many other shells. 



