GEOLOGICAL SECTION. 



25 



GEOLOGICAL SECTION. 



President 



C. I. Gardiner, Esq. 



HIS section has to mourn the loss of its President, 

 Mr Hichens, but in a place like Cheltenham 

 the loss of the President will not we hope mean 

 the extinction of the section. A few members 

 who are keen on the subject went to some of 

 the neighbouring quarries during the winter term 

 and succeeded in getting some very good fossils, 

 and some of the.se have been presented to the School Museum. 



The chief formations which were visited were the Oolite of 

 Leckhampton, Cleeve and Crickley Hills, and the Lias of Leckham- 

 ton and Battledown. 



The Lias, which is the oldest rock exposed in the immediate 

 vicinity of Cheltenham, is a stiff blue clay, and yields many fossils. 

 It is split up into three divisions called the Upper, Middle and Lower 

 Lias, and the pits near Cheltenham seem to be in the Lower Lias. 



All the pits near Battledown and the pit close to Leckhampton 

 Station have yielded Ammonites Striatus, while the pit at the base of 

 Hewletts Hill has yielded Belef?inites, Rhynconella, and several bivalves 

 which have not yet been named. The brick pit just at the base of 

 Leckhampton Hill is in slightly higher beds and has yielded a large 

 number of casts of various fossils, Avicula Inoequivalis being common. 

 W. H. Williams found a very fine Pholodomya here. Enough has 

 been seen at these pits to show that a very large collection of Lias 

 fossils can be made from them and the College museum ought to have 

 such a collection. 



The Oolite which is exposed at Leckhampton Hill is all termed 

 Inferior Oolite, and one can get almost a complete section of that 



