142 



and obscure beds to the labours of this gentleman in this special 

 field, the results of which labours are embodied in a series of 

 papers contributed to the Transactions of the Newbury District 

 Field Club. 



The place of the Sponge Gravel beds of Faringdon have been 

 the subject of much controversy among geologists, but it is now 

 generally conceded that they belong to the Lower Greensand 

 of English authors, equivalent to the Tipper Neocomian and 

 Aptian of French and Swiss geologists. These beds in the 

 Faringdon district are of very limited extent, not exceeding 

 one mile in length by a quarter of a mile in breadth, with a 

 thickness of from 25 to 40 feet. The contained fossils are of 

 two classes — the remains of creatures that lived and died on 

 the spot, and the remains of such as were derived from pre- 

 existent beds, in particulai', from the " Kimmeridge Clay " and 

 " Coral Rag." These consist principally of Vertebrates, Fishes, 

 Saurians, and Turtles. Those natural to the spot include Sponges, 

 Polyzoa, Echinoderms, Serpulites, and Bivalve MoUusks. 



At Fernham village the party halted to inspect the most 

 southerly outcrop of the Sponge Gravels, which here assume 

 the foi^m of a hard compact conglomei'ate. Mr. Davey here 

 read some short notes extracted from papers by Hull and 

 Sharpe, illustrative of the points under notice. 



From Fernham the party walked to Cole's Pits, a cluster of 

 273 basin-shaped excavations extending over 14 acres, which 

 have been conjectured to represent ancient British habitations, 

 but they are on far too large a scale to have been suited to any 

 such purpose, some of the excavations being from 25 to 40 feet 

 deep. They may doubtless be accepted as the vestiges of ancient 

 quarrying for sandstone and iron. 



Boucher's Pit showed about 25 feet of gravel, full of portions 

 of sponges and polyzoa. This was probably a beach or shoal 

 in the old Greensand sea. This is an interesting spot, because 

 there in all probability Llwtd collected the series of fossils 

 deposited by him in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, nearly 

 200 years ago. Ballard's Pit proved highly interesting. It is 

 of large size, covering nearly two acres of ground, and is quite 



