70 GASTEROPODA OF THE INFERIOR OOLITE. 
more especially in Gasteropoda. When we bear in mind that some of the best 
collectors, and the most noted paleontologists, have been connected with the 
Cotteswolds for years, it must be clear that this inferiority cannot be due to 
want of research. In fact the country from Wootton-under-Edge to Cleeve Cloud 
is, above all others, the classic ground of the Inferior Oolite. It is true that in 
some portions of the range, and on some horizons, a considerable number of casts 
and badly preserved specimens of Gasteropoda may reward the labours of the 
collector. But how rare are really good fossils ? If it were not for the Nerinzxas, 
whose critical points are, perhaps, more internal than external, the show would be 
but a poor one, when we reflect on the many years that these beds have been 
under contribution. 
There is another point, too, of some significance. Apart from mere specific 
names, such as help to make up a percentage comparison, there can be no doubt 
that the Gasteropod Fauna of the Great Oolite, as developed at Minchinhampton, 
has far more resemblance to that of the Inferior Oolite, which underlies it, than it 
has to the Gasteropod Fauna of the Inferior Oolite in the Dorset District. Greater 
similarity of facies may in parts account for this, but is there nothing due to the 
score of locality ? Such questions are interesting, and, if taken up and worked out 
by younger paleontologists, may some day lead to conclusions of importance. 
Lastly, it would seem that the Ammonite-zones are not quite so regular and well 
defined in the Cotteswolds as they are in Dorsetshire. When the question 
comes to be worked out, this may not prove to be the case; nor is it my business 
in the present instance to investigate it. But when we see such an anomalous 
assemblage of Ammonites as occurs for instance in the Gryphite-grit (teste Mr. 
Witchell’s collection), we naturally wonder how this series can be made to fit in 
with the Dorsetshire sequence. 
Remainder of the Cotteswold District. 
East of the Vale of Moreton there is a mass of high ground constituting a sort of 
repetition of the Cotteswold Hills. This region extends as far as the Valley of the 
Cherwell. The Inferior Oolite is variously developed, but on the whole the Clypeus- 
grit is the main representative, at least near Chipping-Norton. The Gasteropoda 
in these beds of Inferior Oolite age are not sufficiently numerous or important to 
warrant many details being given here. The most important section is on the new 
railway near Hook Norton, where on both sides of a tunnel a more or less complete 
sequence of the Inferior Oolite may be seen. This has been fully described by Mr. 
Walford (‘ Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,’ 1883, p. 224). 
Hoox Norron.—Though the Inferior Oolite is now verging towards the region 
where it undergoes further modification and a partial eclipse, before assuming 
