94 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1905 
formed under these conditions is the sandstone-bed known 
as the Upper Keuper Sandstone, a stratum well-developed 
in this neighbourhood. Then conditions changed ; causing 
a cessation of the deposition of arenaceous matter, and 
the accumulation of marl again. But after about 215 feet 
of this rock had been formed the waters were again reduced 
by evaporation, and the inland-sea was probably reduced 
to slowly-shrinking lakes surrounded by flats of Keuper 
Marl. Such then was the scene at the close of Keuper 
times: dry flats of marl and a few lakes. Then earth- 
‘movements caused depression in the south-east and a 
slight rise in the west and north-west. Concerning these 
earth-movements much cannot be said at present: it may 
be suggested that the effects were analogous to those of 
which there is unmistakable evidence in the rocks so 
well exposed in the Cotteswold Range—the Inferior Oolite. 
In these rocks there is evidence of repeated movements 
of the sea-floor while they were being deposited, and the 
results of these movements were such as to bend the 
strata into anticlines and synclines: not like those which 
are seen in districts composed of Palzozoic Rocks; but 
flexures of which a synclinal area extends over miles. For. 
example, near the Rising-Sun Hotel, on Cleeve Hill, is a 
synclinal axis, but the anticline is not reached until Birdlip. 
Producing these axes in the required directions, the 
synclinal one will pass near Dunhampstead, not far from 
Droitwich ; while the anticlinal one runs in the direction 
of Lassington, near Gloucester. ; 
Earth-movements may have affected the Keuper deposits 
in this way just before the Rhetic Epoch, and thrown 
them into slight anticlines and synclines; and the same 
movements may have admitted the Rhetic ocean in the 
south-east. 
Now it has been shown that the lowest bed in the 
Rheetic Series so constant over large areas is the stratum 
