7 
While in the yard Earl Bathurst joined the members, and 
kindly invited them to see the fine yew trees in front of his 
residence, which were much admired. 
From there the members proceeded to the station of the 
Midland and South Western Junction Railway, where 
they were met by Mr Shopland, the engineer, who had pro- 
vided comfortably-seated trucks to convey them over the line. 
The length is nearly thirteen miles, in which there are 28 
cuttings, 27 embankments, and a tunnel at Chedworth 420 
yards long. At one of the cuttings the engine was stopped, 
and Professor Harker gave a short description of it, and the 
beds that would be seen during the day. He remarked that 
the cutting showed the transition beds between the Great Oolite 
and the Forest marble, which thus represented two divisions 
of the Great Oolite series—the former known as the Bath 
freestone. A considerable distance of the line was in the 
Great Oolite, but as they proceeded they would descend in the 
geological scale, passing through the Stonesfield slate and 
Fuller’s Earth into the Inferior Oolite. 
A halt was made to see the Roman Villa at Chedworth, 
which, in the unavoidable absence of Mr G. Witts, was explained 
by the Hon. Secretary, Mr Wethered. 
A walk over the tunnel brought the party to the railway 
trucks again, and in proceeding along the line the Hon. 
Secretary gave a lucid description of the beds, and explained 
the general position of the Inferior Oolite series. 
During the day I called attention to the numerous fissures 
in the rocks in the cuttings, filled in with a reddish-brown clay, 
which I believed belonged to the boulder clay which once 
covered the Cotteswolds. It must have been of great thickness, 
as not only the vertical fissures, to the depth of 8 to 10 feet, 
were jammed with it, but it was also forced some distance into 
horizontal ones many feet below the surface. 
Quartz pebbles have been found in this description of clay, 
and samples taken from various parts shew an average of 68 
per cent. of silica in the clay—(for full particulars see my 
paper, “ Extension of Northern Drift and Boulder Clay over 
the Cotteswold Range,” Vol. VII., page 55.) 
