PROCEEDINGS OF THE COTTESWOLD CLUB 237 



was a scarab, of Eastern origin, dating from 400 — 500 

 B.C., and Dr Budge, of the British Museum, reports that 

 it is one of only some seven or eight objects of Phieniciah 

 date that have been found in England. Some singular 

 torus mouldings attracted attention, and it was pointed 

 out that they were like j)atterns of mouldings found at 

 Gloucester, Bath, and Silchester, indicating contempor- 

 aneity in certain buildings in all these towns. 



The Forest Marble which is well developed, and now 

 well exposed in the neighbourhood of Cirencester, was 

 said in the circular calling the meeting to have " hardly 

 " received the attention which it deserves at the hands of 

 "the geologists of the Club." There is no excuse for 

 further neglect. Very recently a memoir has been issued 

 by the Geological Survey on the Lower Oolites, and in it 

 Mr Horace Woodward treats in great detail of the Forest 

 Marble, and gives numerous sections of the beds on the 

 Cotteswolds. Under Professor Harker's guidance quarries 

 were visited at Furzen Leaze, Siddington, and Poulton, in 

 which the beds were seen in ascending order. Although 

 the Forest Marble is classed among the Oolites the lower 

 bed is not Oolitic at all. It is a hard, firm, blue stone 

 which takes a very high polish, and is mainly made up of 

 foraminifera, and broken particles of wood with occasional 

 fishes' teeth, and iron pyrites. Professor Harker pointed 

 out that geologists generally believe that the occasional 

 blue colour of the Great Oofite and the blue of the Forest 

 Marble beds is due to the presence of one of the lower 

 oxides of iron, and that when exposed to the air the blue 

 colour disappears. But in the Furzen Leaze quarry is a 

 great heap of stone from the lower Forest Marble beds, 

 which was quarried six or seven years ago, and which 

 still retains its original deep blue colour. Professor 

 Harker's explanation is that the iron in the stone is not 

 protoxide or carbonate, but a sulphide, and hence not so 

 susceptible to atmospheric influences as the lower oxides 



