vc. xvn. (X) INFERIOR OOLITE-SOUTH COTTESWOLDS 



Wood ; but the " disappearance " of the Freestone -bdmsio- 

 is mor; complete than this. In the neighbourhood of Bath the 

 IZIoi It has gone, and the Upper ^^^'g-^-^f ^f ^^l^ft"^ 

 Tpon the Upper-Lias sands. The freestone of the Bath d- 

 trict referred to by Lycett, is a supra-Upper Tngoma-Gnt 

 nferior-O^^^^^^ deposit-not an inferior one. Lycett also wrote 

 hit the Upper Ragstone ^-PPeared^^^^^^^^- ^o he^^^^^^^ 

 Wotton-under-Edge. This is not quite correct . all except the 

 UpTerr Lma-G?it do ; but this subdivision ^s continuous 

 ^rom Stroud to the immediate neighbourhood of the Mendips^ 

 In 1856. the attention of students of the Inferior Oolite 

 and Lias was directed by Dr Thomas Wright to the question 

 as to where the precise line of demarcation between Lias and 

 OoSe should come. Dr Wright gave excellent records o th 

 sections at Frocester and Wotton-under^Edge and was the 

 first to apply the term " Cephalopod-Bed to the rich y 

 ammonitifefous deposit that occurs ^t the base ooWusy 

 Inferior-Oolite rocks in these sections. He grouped it, together 

 with the Cotteswold Sands, with the Lias.^ 



Tames Buckman, in a paper on "The Oolite Rocks of 

 Gloucestershire and North Wilts," published in 1857,^ however, 

 strongly objected to Wright extending the Upper Lias so as to 

 nclude the Sands and Cephalopod-Bed. because he thought 

 .that the Sands and Cephalopod-Bed ^ere the equiva^nts 

 of the " mixed pisohtic beds " of the neighbourhood of Chel- 

 tenham. No doubt his erroneous correlation arose from 

 he Idea that what is now called the Lower Limest^e 

 at such sections in the South Cotteswolds as Froces er Hill 

 was equivalent to the Lower Freestone of such localities as 

 Lckhlpton Hill, and since the Pea-Grit Beds carne &. 0. 

 the Lower Freestone at Leckhampton. their equivalents m the 

 Stroud district must be looked for below the Lower Limestone. 

 The same year saw the production of two memoirs 

 intimately concerned with the Inferior Oolite of the Cotteswold 

 Hills. The one was by Prof. E. Hull on " The Geology of the 

 Country around Cheltenham" (Mem. Geol. Surv. ; and the 

 other was by Dr J. Lycett. entitled " The Cotteswold Hills. 



1 Quart. Joum. Geol. Soc, vol. xii. {1856), pp. 292-325- 



2 Ibid. (1858), pp. 98-130. 



