59 
value,* are of special interest to the Palontologist, and their 
history and origin is by no means easy to explain. The 
term is applied to certain strata which are almost entirely 
composed of the remains of fish and saurians, more or less 
rolled and fragmentary. They are known to occur in 
several different formations, and always at the close of one 
great epoch and the commencement of another, and usually 
form the basement or lowest, é.e. earliest formed stratum in 
each succeeding group. 
In descending Geological order, the following have been 
recorded. 
1.—‘ Bone bed’ at the base of the lower Green Sand, at its 
junction with the Wealden. 
2.—Bone bed’ at the base of the Inferior Oolite, { at its 
junction with the Lias, which I discovered some years 
ago in Gloucestershire, and is probably local and of 
limited extent. { 
3.—‘Bone bed’ at the base of the Lias, at its junction with 
the new red marl or upper division of the New Red 
Sandstone, (Trias.) As the sandstones, shelly lime- 
stones, and clays, associated with this bone bed are now 
separated from the Lias, and classed with the Rheetic 
by most Geologists, though some consider them to be 
more nearly related to the Trias; it will be better to 
consider them as a separate and independent group, but 
this will not invalidate the fact that the bone bed comes 
in between the two great epochs, the Trias and the Lias, 
forming as many of those bone beds do, the passage 
beds between one formation and the other. 
Bred as it is possible that the Rhostic bone bed may be turned to account 
in this way. 
+ There are hard, dark nodules both in the Inferior Oolite and Lias, which are 
more or less highly charged with Phosphoric Acid, These were discovered to be 
phosphatic twenty years ago, by Mr. Beesley, of Banbury, and although this refers 
more especially to that immediate neighbourhood, there is no doubt that similar 
phosphate nodules occur in both these formations elsewhere. 
t Geological Journal, No, 1850-51, Vol. 6 & 7, Part 1. 
