VOL. XVI.(3) DORSET AND HAMPSHIRE COASTS 267 
THE DORSET AND HAMPSHIRE COASTS 
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO 
THE FOREST MARBLE BEDS NEAR LANGTON 
HERRING 
BY 
L. RICHARDSON 
(Report by Lecturer.) 
A section drawn across the Severn Valley from the 
Malvern Hills to the Cotteswolds, reveals between the 
Malverns and about the line of the Severn the red Keuper 
Marls; then the low but well-defined escarpment of the 
Rheetic and basal Liassic beds; followed by the Lower 
Lias, which extends up to the foot of the Cotteswolds ; 
the Middle and Upper Lias, with lastly the Inferior Oolite 
on the top.. These Liassic and Inferior Oolite beds 
stretch right across England from Yorkshire to Dorset, 
forming broad belts. On the English Channel the In- 
ferior Oolite ends off near Bridport. 
Between the Inferior Oolite of Leckhampton Hill and 
the Chalk of the Marlborough Downs, and occupying that 
gently-inclined plain drained by the upper portion of the 
Thames and its tributaries, is a vast thickness of deposit 
comprising the Great-Oolite Series, Oxfordian, Corallian, 
Kimmeridgian, Portlandian, Purbeckian, Vectian and 
