116 SUPPLEMENT TO GREAT OOLITE MOLLUSCA. 
contents are detailed with all the care and precision that might be expected from a person who had been 
long resident in the locality. Within the few years following appeared the elaborate works of Goldfuss, 
Ziethen, Roemer, Dunker, Agassiz, Deshayes, Sir R. Murchison’s second edition of the ‘ Geology of Chel- 
tenham,’ the ‘ Catalogue’ of Professor Morris, the memoir of D’Archiac on the Aisne, several memoirs by M. 
Eudes Deslongchamps on the fossils of the Oolites of Normandy, a portion of the ‘ Paléontologie Francaise’ 
of D’Orbigny, Quenstedt’s ‘Wurtemburg,’ and the ‘Lethea’ of Bronn. These works, together with others 
which bear less directly upon the subject of the Lower Oolites, tended very materially to extend and correct 
the knowledge of their fossils. During the same period also the fossils of the Great Oolite in Gloucester- 
shire had become extensively dispersed, and were compared with those from the Yorkshire coast, collected 
and distributed with great perseverance by Mr. Bean during a lengthened period. The first published 
results of influences so potential appeared in 1850, when M. d’Orbigny, in his ‘ Prodrome de Paléontologie,’ 
placed many of the so-called Great Oolite Yorkshire fossils in his Etage Bajocien, or Inferior Oolite. In 
the same year appeared the first part of the monograph on the Great Oolite Mollusca, in the introductory 
remarks to which the authors pointed out the affinity of the Yorkshire so-called Great Oolite fauna to that 
of the Inferior Oolite, and, as a measure of precaution, were careful to keep the doubtful Yorkshire fossils 
distinct, both in plates and descriptions, from the Great Oolite fossils of the south of England. The various 
works and lesser memoirs upon the Lower Jurassic rocks published between 1850 and the present time 
would of themselves constitute a considerable list. Without enumerating them, it will be sufficient to 
mention that, in 1856-8, Dr. Albert Oppel, in his remarkable work, ‘Juraformation, placed the Yorkshire 
Phytiferous beds with the Inferior Oolite, and considered that they did not even represent the highest stage 
of that formation. In 1857 the present writer expressed, in a little work, ‘The Cotteswold Hills,’ convic- 
tions of similar import. In 1859 Dr. Wright enforced similar views, accompanied by extensive details and 
lists of Inferior Oolite fossils, in a contribution to the ‘Journal of the Geological Society.’ The previous 
Great Oolite Monograph contains four plates of these Yorkshire intercalated marine Testacea ; some of 
which, however, pass upwards into the Great Oolite of the Cotteswolds and into the Cornbrash, as will be 
ascertained from the descriptions. In excluding them from the present Supplementary Monograph, the 
writer begs to state that he consented to their admission into the former work with great reluctance, in 
deference to the opinion then prevalent that they pertained to the Great Oolite, but with a strong impression 
(formed in 1839, upon perusing the memoir of Professor Williamson) that they constituted an Inferior 
Oolite fauna. 
The Palzeontologists of France, in their expositions of the Great Oolite fossils of that country, have, 
within the last few years, fully proved, by the general identity and association of species, that the fauna of 
the Minchinhampton beds is not exceptional or local merely, as some have supposed, but represents a very 
ample and characteristic series of Mollusca, a large number of which are also found in other and distant 
localities at the same geological horizon. Other not less interesting and important facts, confirmatory of 
this view, have recently been afforded by researches in English strata of the same epoch. The Oxfordshire 
railway sections of the Great Oolite and Forest Marble have yielded to Mr. Whiteaves a varied series of 
Testacea, a list of which he has kindly communicated to me, together with many of the fossils, including 
those which are not known in the Minchinhampton beds; the result is, that of 122 Great Oolite and 48 
Forest Marble shells, in all 140 species, obtained by that gentleman in the Oxfordshire beds, upwards of 
114 are also common to the Minchinhampton beds. An extensive series of Forest Marble shells from 
the clay beds of Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Dorsetshire, liberally placed at my disposal by Mr. Walton, 
has produced a larger number of novel forms, as might have been expected from the very different litho- 
logical conditions of the deposit; nevertheless there is still a majority of Minchinhampton shells, and the 
entire assemblage is even more remotely allied to the Yorkshire fauna than is that of Minchinhampton. 
The general discordance, therefore, of the Yorkshire and southern faunas of the supposed Great Oolite 
within so small an area as England would lead us to infer their separation chronologically, even if we were 
unable to assign the northern series to that of an older and well-known era. 
