The Inferior Oolite between Andoversford and Bourton-on-the- 
Water. By 8.8. Bucxmay, F.G.S. 
During last summer (1886) I have had the opportunity to 
study the rocks exposed in the cuttings of that portion of the 
Banbury and Cheltenham Railway which runs between Ando- 
versford and Bourton-on-the-Water, a distance of about nine 
miles through the North Cotteswolds. My attention has chiefly 
been directed to those which show the Inferior Oolite, and which 
present to us a series of sections affording a great insight into 
the stratigraphical arrangement of a large portion of that 
formation. As every year the faces of these cuttings will 
become more and more indistinct, on account of the fall of 
rubble from the upper portion obscuring the lower, a record of 
the facts which they now present to our view can scarcely be 
out of place. I also do not know that any systematic series of 
notes* has been published concerning them, while they bring 
to our notice at least two very important series of beds which 
are nowhere else so well developed, of which one is probably 
quite peculiar to this district. Besides this they present us 
with some extremely fine sections of the Oolite Marl and the 
Clypeus Grits, not to mention other well known intermediate 
deposits. 
Starting at Andoversford on a slight embankment over the 
Upper Lias, we end at Bourton-on-the-Water on the Lower 
Lias, having passed through Sections of the Inferior Oolite, 
Fuller’s Earth, Stonesfield Slate, and Great Oolite, but not 
at all in this order. 
* I must however call attention to some notice of these cuttings by Mr 
E. A. Walford in the following papers:—“‘On the Northampton Sand,” 
Quarterly Journal Geolog. Soc., 1883, page 225, etc.; “ Crinoidal and other 
beds in the Great Oolite.” 
