382 



formation. This demands notice, because althong'h fitly placed 

 where it is, it would, on the score of utility, have been not less 

 than judicious had it been reprinted, as it would make the best 

 hand-book we could have of the Lias of Gloucestershire. In 

 this carefully prepared resume, the sub-divisions or stages of the 

 Middle Lias, are stated to be five in niamber. A short but terse 

 description of the Spinatus Zone is there given. And this may 

 be supplemented by a perusal of perhaps the more matured 

 views of the same author in his elaborate " Correlation " paper * 

 at page 164 of the Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' 

 Soc. for 1869. This is a valuable testimony I can adduce from 

 one who has spent his best years in pursuing these studies after 

 the Baconian method of interrogating nature, and patiently, 

 and reverently awaiting a response. In the South West of 

 England, Mr. Chas. Moore has published the results of his 

 labours among the Middle Lias deposits of that part of the 

 country. His work which clearly bears the impress of great 

 industry, is entitled, " On the Middle and Upper Lias of the 

 South West of England," by Chas. Moore F.G.S., in the 

 Proceedings of the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural 

 History Society, vol. XIII, 1865—1866. In this treatise Mr. 

 MooEE describes sections taken at various places in Somerset- 

 shire; in some of them he has been very happy in the 

 collection of new species of liassic fossils, and his work affords 

 indications, both petrographically and palseontologically, of the 

 existence of a capping of the Spinatus beds overlying the 

 Marlstone rocks ; but in consequence of the author throwing 

 them all together, like the older geologists, under the general 

 title of Marlstone, his results stratigraphically seem vitiated and 

 disappointing, somewhat reminding us of the sage dictum of 

 the jurists, " Dolus latet in generalibus.'" 



Perhaps a work more able than that on the Geology of 

 Rutland &c., by Mr. John Judd ("Memoirs of the Geol. 

 Survey," London, 1875) cannot be read; it deserves careful 



*0n the Correlation of the Jurassic Eocks of the Cote d"Or with those of 

 Gloucester and Wilts. Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists" Field Club, 

 18G9. 



