18 
where Carboniferous rocks largely prevail. The history 
of the drifts generally, of whatever age, here and elsewhere 
is one of considerable difficulty, and a great deal more 
has yet to be done by geologists before they will be satis- 
factorily explained or clearly understood. Proceeding 
downwards in the geological scale, we have in this county 
none of the great systems, Tertiary, Cretaceous, or Oolitic, 
until we come to the Lias, which although placed by some 
geologists in the lowest Oolitic or Jurassic group should 
rather, perhaps, hold a position as a separate system by itself. 
Whether any of the three systems above-mentioned, or a 
portion of them, ever occurred here overlying the Lias and 
Trias can of course never be decided, though I think there 
is evidence of a more northerly extension of the chalk, 
and perhaps some of the Oolites may once have covered 
these older groups. The Lias* occupies a large area in 
the south, east, and west, and consists for the most part 
of the middle and lower divisions, the upper Lias being 
chiefly represented by a thin bed of clay, with some 
characteristic fossils on the hill above Fenny Compton 
and a few other places, and there is evidence to show that 
it formerly capped} the range of the Edge Hills adjacent, 
occupying its proper position above the marlstone, or 
middle Lias, of which they are mainly composed. From 
this point a good descending section may be obtained from 
the marlstone, through the underlying clays and marly- 
the county, the middle Lias forming the hills projecting in spurs to the north-west, 
and the lower division extending in the same direction, at a lower level, up to the 
southern edge of the Trias, The more central and northern parts are occupied by the 
New Red Sandstone (marls and sandstone, the former predominating), and this forms 
by far the larger portion of it, a smaller area on the north-east being filled up by the 
Permian and Carboniferous rocks. 
+ Many years ago I detected some fragments of the ‘‘fish bed,” well known in the 
lower portion of the upper Lias in Gloucestershire, at Edge Hill; so that it may be 
fairly inferred that the upper Lias, to a greater or less extent, once capped the marl- 
stone there, and has since been denuded, leaving only the harder included limestone 
(fish bed), portions of which are scattered about in the fields below the hill, 
