THE RHATIC BEDS. 3 
believe, the credit of recognising them as Rheetics is due to the 
late Mr. Molyneux, who has left us some interesting particulars 
concerning them. ‘The particulars and measurements are, how- 
ever, necessarily imperfect, owing to the infrequency of anything 
like a good section, except in the lower division of the series, and 
to the necessity of having to rely for the most part upon a few 
superficial excavations in the banks of lanes, etc. Overlying the 
characteristic red Keuper Marls, we have first of all about roo 
feet of light green calcareous marls. ‘These are the ‘‘ Tea Green 
Marls” of Etheridge. Above the Tea Green Marls, which here 
are quite unfossiliferous, come about 18 to 20 feet of strata, con- 
sisting of alternations of thin micaceous sandstones and marly 
limestones, containing occasional casts of a bivalve, Pudlastra 
arenicola, These are succeeded upwards by the most interesting 
members of the whole series, consisting of black, carbonaceous, 
laminated shales, resembling closely in appearance coal-measure 
shale. 
These paper-shales, as they have been well called, from the 
thin laminz into which they split, are very characteristic of the 
Rheetics, and in some parts of England they contain abundance 
of fish remains. Our Needwood shales have not as yet yielded 
any vertebrate remains ; but as they have been so little searched, 
this. is not to be wondered at. 
The black shales are the highest member of the Rheetics 
observed in our neighbourhood ; but it is highly probable that 
further detailed examination may result in the discovery of some 
overlying rocks, probably even traces of the Lower Lias itself. 
The thick sheet of boulder clay which covers all the high land 
of the Forest renders field observations very difficult, but we must 
look forward to the chance excavation of marl-pits or wells to 
throw more light upon the subject. Anyone of our members 
who has friends living in the neighbourhood of Christ Church, 
Needwood, or Abbot’s Bromley, would be doing good service by 
asking them to report any new wells or cuttings made in the 
district. 
In the south of England the black shales are overlaid by the 
