sal iy Ni nalieatl Ba 
105 
capping of Great Oolite. The hill is denuded on all sides, and 
forms an outlier. There cannot be any doubt that Selsley was 
once capped by these beds, but the denuding forces have 
completely carried them away, leaving no trace of their former 
presence. 
In considering the physical conditions which prevailed 
during the deposition of the Selsley beds of Inferior Oolite 
it becomes apparent that certain changes took place in some 
parts of the Cotteswold area which did not materially affect the 
others. The Lower Limestone beds were however deposited over 
the whole area without much change, as the same description of 
them applies generally to all the Sections (except the pebble 
beds at Selsley and Randwick). They consist chiefly of drifted 
materials which were deposited in a sea of no great depth, 
probably near a sea-shore, but the source from whence they 
came is not easily determined. The small Quartz pebbles and 
encrinal detritus indicate the wearing away of some ancient 
strata, either in the direction of the Malverns, May hill, and 
the Forest of Dean to the north, or Dartmoor to the south-west; 
and we may venture to suppose that when the liassic strata and 
the overlying Cotteswold sands lay undenuded along the flanks 
of the hills to the north, and the deposition of the Oolites 
_commenced, there was a shore line in the direction indicated 
by the pebble beds, with dry land on the north and open sea 
on the south. 
These conditions would account for the origin of all the 
materials which constitute the Lower Limestone. The Quartz 
pebbles would come from the distant paleozoic strata before 
- mentioned; the encrinal detritus from May hill and the car- 
boniferous rocks of the Forest of. Dean, and the south-western 
parts of Gloucestershire; and the ferruginous sandy grit which 
Ihave mentioned as alternating with the white Oolitic Lime- 
stone and enclosing the Oolitic pebbles, might be attributed to 
the denudation of the same rocks and the transport to the sea 
by river action of the eroded materials. If we admit the 
probability of the pebble beds at Selsley and Randwick having 
been once a sea beach, the foregoing supposition becomes a 
probability. The Oolitic pebbles, which constitute a large 
