Notes on the Ammonites of the Sands intermediate the Upper Liat and 

 Inferior Oolite. By Johk Ltcett, M.D. 



1'he annual presidential address to the Cotteswold Naturalists' Club, 1860, 

 p. 184, comments upon the Possils of the Sands intermediate the Inferior 

 Oolite and Lias, and contains remarks which have induced me to offer the 

 following notes illustrative of the Ammonites contained in these sands, and 

 intended to afford a concise analytic examination of their natural history, 

 characters, and geological distribution. It has hitherto been generally 

 considered that they aU belong to the Upper Lias, by which term is usually 

 understood in this county all the shales, clays, and argillaceous sandstones 

 (the Lias Epsilon of Quenstedt), superimposed upon the Middle Lias, or 

 Marlstone, and beneath the sands which for the most part underlie the 

 Inferior Oolite in England. The following facts will, however, probably 

 be considered very much to modify this view, and to show that a large 

 proportion of these Ammonites have no connection with the Lias Epsihn, 

 but are special to the sands, also, that three of them are boundary species, 

 and have only a very limited vertical range, occurring at the junction of 

 Sands with the Upper Lias («), the others at the upper boundary of the 

 Bands, and appearing at some foreign localities as species of Inferior Oolite> 

 but in England as species of the Sands. The establishment of these facts 

 will also tend materially to remove an apparent discordance which 

 appears to exist between the Cephalopoda and Conchifera of the Sands, 

 the former being supposed to be exclusively Liassic, the latter consisting 

 of Inferior Oolite and special forms, together with a very small minority 

 of Liassic, the latter also passing upwards only to the lowest fosilliferous 

 zone of the Sands. The following table has been drawn up to shew the 

 vertical range of the Ammonites of the Sands, excluding those which 

 are special to the lias beneath them. 



