VOL. XVI. (3) EXCURSION—SHEPTON MALLET, FROME 229 
portions may have originated as screes the rock-masses were cemented 
together by material deposited from the Keuper sea, and therefore 
indicate the position of the shore-line. In Rhetic and Liassic times 
their land-surface was somewhat encroached upon, and those deposits 
assume a littoral aspect, but it was not until Oxfordian times that 
there was any real possibility of their having been completely sub- 
merged. 
Prof. Reynolds conducted the members to the place where he 
first found fragments of fossiliferous Silurian rock that had been turned 
out by rabbits. It is in a field 300 yards south-west of Tadhill Farm. 
Here he had trenches dug, and Silurian beds with many fossils were 
revealed. Extending his researches he found that the tuffs and ashy 
conglomerates were interbedded in these Silurian beds, and that even 
the pyroxene-andesites of Moon’s-Hill Quarry were of the same age. 
The next place visited was the site of a quarry in the ashy conglom- 
erates opened in the hope of striking the andesite. At Sunnyhill 
Quarry the yellow sandy beds of the Silurian were searched for 
fossils, and below them was observed a very fine bed of volcanic tuff. 
These beds are exposed in the entrance-cutting to the quarry, which 
is in the andesite. Then the great Moon’s-Hill Quarry was entered 
where the andesite is so finely exposed and extensively worked. 
Mr Winwood remarked that he had visited this locality with Charles 
Moore a short time after that geologist had discovered the trap-rock, 
and remembered it as a grass field. The industry has indeed ex- 
panded since then. Passing through a little tunnel, Prof. Reynolds 
pointed out a bed of tuff intercalated between the great masses of trap 
worked in the two quarries. 
After a short stop for a bread-and-cheese meal at the inn at the 
cross-roads, the drive was continued along Beacon Hill, where a 
number of tumuli were observed, to Maesbury Camp. ‘This camp 
commands extraordinarily extensive views, embracing the North Hill 
(Minehead), the Quantocks, the Wellington Monument on the Black- 
down Hills, Glastonbury Tor, Alfred’s Tower, Stourton (on the edge 
of the Cretaceous upland), Lansdown Hill (Bath), Dundry Hill, and 
the hills of South Wales. ‘ The ramparts of Maesbury Camp are very 
extensive, and along the northern portion are preceded by a deep 
ditch that often contains water. 
Leaving the camp, a siding at the Windsor-Hill Quarry was 
visited at the request of Mr A. W. Halsted, of Shepton Mallet, who 
had joined the party, and Mr Richardson identified the Gmuendense- 
Beds of the Lower Lias, with specimens of Spiriferina Walcotti, and 
indications of the ‘‘ Phosphatic Bed” of such sections as that at Clan 
Down, Radstock, resting upon the Carboniferous Limestone. In a 
quarry by the side of the railway at the southern end of the viaduct 
north of Shepton Mallet, bastard freestones, similar to the Sutton 
Stone of Glamorganshire, and of Broadfield Down, near Bristol, were 
studied. The rock is a very pretty sparry limestone, with layers of 
pebbles of Carboniferous limestone, and full of Ostrea Jiassica 
(Strickland), Pecten (Chlamys) pollux, d’Orbigny, and Volsella minima 
$2 
