11 
next in the order of succession in this neighbourhood it has next to 
be considered. The Liasis divided into upper, middle, and lower. 
The first of these only appears at a few places in the county, chiefly 
near Avon Dassett and Banbury; and is there of very limited extent 
and thickness compared with the same stratum in other parts of Eng- 
land. In Warwickshire it consists of beds of blue clay and shale, with 
the usual characteristic fossils. There is evidence to show that it 
formerly occupied a much larger area, and probably capped the Edge- 
hills, The middle Lias holds a more important position, and forms 
the highest range of hills in this immediate neighbourhood, as the 
Edgehills, Avon Dassett, and towards Shipston. These are mainly 
composed of hard blue and grey calcareous stone termed marlstone, 
which, from its superior hardness and agreeable colour, makes an 
excellent stone for building and other purposes, and the more so, as it 
contains very few fossils, which is rather singular considering their 
profusion in this division of the Lias elsewhere. Below this are 
numerous beds of clay and limestone, more or less fossiliferous, which 
are, however, rarely exposed, but good sections may be seen on the 
G. W. Railway at Fenny Compton, and in the clay-pits adjacent. 
These divisions of the Lias are confined to the district which lies south 
and south-east of Warwick and Leamington. These beds are succeeded 
by a series of shales and limestones of considerable extent and 
thickness, and of much lithological and economic importance. Some 
fine sections may be seen in the railway cutting at Harbury, and in 
Messrs. Greaves and Kirshaw’s extensive quarries at Harbury and 
Stockton. These strata are termed the lima beds, from the great 
abundance of a large bivalve shell, lima gigantea. These are suc- 
ceeded by the ‘insect and saurian’ beds, so named from the abundance 
of insects and the two great sea lizards, so characteristic of the Lias 
icthyosaurus and plesiosaurus; though these saurians do not distinguish 
this zone so well as the insects; but these are only represented by a 
very thin band at Harbury, though more largely developed at 
Wilmcote. There we have a lower series of limestones and shales of 
much finer texture, and marked by a somewhat different set of fossils. 
Fine sections of these beds are exposed at Wilmcote, Binton, and 
Grafton. Much of the stone might be profitably used for lithographic 
purposes, and is now extensively employed for paving and flooring, 
and in making Roman cement, at the works of Messrs. Greaves and 
Kirshaw, at Wilmcote. Underneath the insect beds a still more 
distinctive and peculiar series of strata come in, consisting of coarse, 
hard-grained limestones, grits, and sandstones, divided by clay, 
yielding some peculiar fossils, one stratum being made up of rude 
bones and teeth of fish and saurians, hence named the “ bone bed,” 
but this is but very poorly represented in this county, though traces 
of it may be noted at Binton, and in a singular liassic outlier at 
Knowle. These lowest beds of the Lias are also exposed in another 
remarkable outlier at Brown’s Wood, near Wootton Wawen, but the 
sections are much obscured, the quarries being now entirely closed. 
One of the limestones overlying these strata referred to above, and 
which crops out in places below the ‘lima and saurian or insect beds,’ 
deserves especial notice from its remarkable mineralogical structure 
