17 



shire series. From these recent discoveries of the Rhcetics, 

 in different directions, it seems reasonable to infer that they 

 will be found more or less wherever the lower Lias on its 

 Eastern edge is bounded by the Trias; which it is for the 

 most part in its course from S E. to N.W. In the Geological 

 Magazine for February, 1875, it is stated by Mr. Crutwell 

 that the ' bone bed,' with the usual characteristic fossils had 

 been found for the first time in that district, about ten miles 

 North-West of Frome, on the South Eastern flank of the 

 Mendips, at a depth of three hundred and ten feet in sinking 

 down to the lower coals.* It seems that this peculiar and 

 somewhat local deposit in places, as at Westbury, (there are 

 two or more bone beds, of some thickness,) has a more 

 South-Westerly extension, as it can be traced from the 

 Welsh and Dorset coasts, through Gloucestershire at inter- 

 vals, Somerset and Devon, where it appears in sections on 

 the coast. In a South-Easterly direction it apparently thins 

 out and is lost; although the Rhoetic shales have now been 

 traced more or less continuously through Warwickshire, 

 Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and York- 

 shire. At the Spinney hills there is only one thin ' bone 

 bed' at the base of the black shales; veiy soft and rotten, 

 full of broken bones and teeth in a veiy imperfect and 

 decomposed state. At present Leicester appears to be the 

 most Northerly point where it has been noticed. In 

 Warwickshire, it has only been recognised at one spot, f 



Note. — No Univalves have been recorded from near Leicester, and although 

 they occur in the Limestones at Bere, in Somerset, I have not yet observed any in 

 Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, or Warwickshire, though of course they may be 

 met with hereafter. 



NoTB. — The substance of this Paper was given in a lecture at the Annual Meeting 

 of this Society, Apiil 4, 1875. 



* I discovered it some years ago on the more Southern edge of the Mendipa 

 near Wells, and described it in the Journal of the Geological Society. 



t For a fuller account of the Ehoetic boue beds and fossils, see my paper on 

 'Phosphatic and bone bed deposits,' Report of Warwickshire Natural History 

 Society, 1872, pp. 63 to 66. 



