47 
Vallis, where the Inferior Oolite rests on the levelled surface of 
the older rocks in the same way. Another example of the vast. 
amount of denudation which the inrush or outrush of some 
mighty waters have brought about in past times ! 
Succeeding these planed off inequalities of the Carboniferous 
Limestone are the Black Rhetic Shales. Can we realise the vast 
space of time represented by this gap? If we are dealing with 
the Upper Limestones of this series, there ought to come in the 
thousands of feet of the Coal Measures proper, and the greater 
portion of the New Red Sandstone series, measured by at the 
least many hundreds of feet, before we come to these Black 
Shales, whose normal position is on the top of the New Red 
Sandstone or the Keuper Marls. 
_ The Black Shales, in places mottled and rusty in colour, are 
about 4ft. 4in. thick, having at their base, where they rest on the 
Limestone, small rounded pebbles. About 5in. from their base, 
non-continuous patches of the Bone bed—of varying thickness, 
and only found in the centre of the section where the shales are 
thickest—come in, of the usual thickness of 1}in. 
- Next comes White Shaly Clay, representing the White Lias, 
2ft. Sin,, capped by humus containing broken-up pieces of White 
Lias at its base. At the left hand side, or S.W. end of the 
section, a mass of pinkish mottled Limestone, 10ft. long by 9ft. 
high, appears rather puzzling to account for; at first, I was 
disposed to look upon it as one of those so-called dykes or 
infillings described by Chas. Moore, so familiar to us in the 
Vallis ; its somewhat brecciated appearance on its exposed face © 
lent weight to this opinion. Adhering to this mass, at the N.E. 
corner, and graduating into the pinkish brecciated rock of which 
the rest is composed, was a patch of conglomerate containing 
pebbles, fish teeth ard bones of Rhetic age. Beneath this solid 
mass comes in Black Shale and Clay, with carbonaceous markings, 
6in. Beneath this a band of solid Limestone, dipping 27° S.W. ; 
a foot or so only of this is exposed, the base being covered up 
