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VOL. XV. (3) EXCURSION—LECKHAMPTON HILL 185 
minute, rolled, and fragmentary, but in sufficient numbers to form a 
kind of Bone-bed, and probably belong to more than one species of 
Fish, and I have only noticed one which could be ascribed to Saurians. 
Teeth are not common; the few which have been discovered were 
pronounced by Sir P. Egerton to belong to a species of Hydodus.” 
Some fragments of the bones, etc., were submitted by Brodie to a Mr 
J. C. Nesbitt for analysis, and found to contain ‘‘ between 40 to 50 per 
cent. of phosphate of lime.” The basement-bed of the Sczsswm-Beds 
on the south face of Crickley Hill is largely composed of shell-débris, 
but contains also a few well-preserved specimens of <Audacothyris 
Blakei and Rhynchonella cynocephala, and numerous black particles. 
Dr E. W. Skeats, F.G.S., now Professor of Geology in the University of 
Melbourne, kindly furnished the Director with the following megascopic 
description of a hand-specimen. ‘‘ The rock consists of a fairly com- 
pact limestone, of a greenish-brown colour. It contains a large 
amount of finely divided calcareous mud in which occur numerous 
angular pieces of shells, cleavage-fragments of sea-urchin spines and 
a large number of small brown and black shining grains. ‘These have 
a vitreous lustre, sometimes exhibit a conchoidal fracture, while a 
chemical examination shows that phosphorus is present in abundance.” 
These black particles are no doubt the fragments of bone, etc., 
noticed by Brodie. 
The Director then described the Pea-Grit, the lower beds of 
which at Cleeve Hill furnish good blocks for foundation-stones. 
Reference was made to Mr E. B. Wethered’s very interesting 
discoveries with regard to the origin of the pisolite-spherules. Mr 
Wethered had found out that some, indeed most, of the spherules 
were formed by the growth of minute tubular bodies, possibly thallo- 
phytes, around a nucleus. Others however were no doubt concre- 
tionary, layer after layer of calcareous material having accumlated 
around the nucleus. 
Above the Pea-Grit, and between it and the Ragstones, come the 
series of freestone-beds with the intervening Oolite Marl to which 
Lycett applied the term “‘Fimbria Stage.” He remarked that the 
freestones were ‘‘ for the most part a Gloucestershire group of beds 
or subformation, which rapidly diminishes in its extension both to the 
north-east and south-west, beyond the limits of the county,” and that 
the section at Leckhampton Hill was ‘‘ the most comprehensive example 
afforded by any one section of the freestone.”* These remarks 
of Lycett are certainly correct. 
The ‘‘ Fimbria Stage” admits of division into three parts—the 
Lower Freestone, Oolite Marl, and Upper Freestone. The thickness 
of the first-named seems generally to have been over estimated. Mr 
Paris and the Director have measured it on two occasions with the 
same result and find it to be 77 feet 9 inches. At about 4o feet above 
the base of the Lower Freestone there is an interesting deposit 3 feet 
9 inches in thickness which in one place consists of imperfectly-bedded 
1 “The Cotteswold Hills” (1857), p. 35. 
