PALAEONTOLOGY OF THE LIAS. 61 



(^n tjie l^fllflBnutnlagii nf tjie MMt iin& 



BY MR. CHARLES MOORE. 



IN my school-boy days, my half holidays were often 

 spent in collecting the Ammonites with which the 

 beds of the Upper Lias in the neighbourhood of Ilminster 

 abound, for the pui'pose of rubbing them dowTi to shew 

 their sparry Chambers ; but having soon to engage in the 

 active bastle of life, this amusement was quickly forgotteu. 

 Döring my residence in Bath a few years since, an 

 occasional ramble into the quarries around it, served to 

 revive a dormant taste for geology, a taste which when 

 once cidtivated is rarely lost. To those whom this science 

 interests, nature presents herseif in newer and more attrac- 

 tive forms, and whether it be in wonder at the mighty 

 forces that have been in action in raising om* mountain 

 chains to their present elevations, and thereby exposing to 

 our view riches which otherwise would have been unknown, 

 and without which our favoured coimtry could not have 

 attained its present glory ; whether we consider the more 

 gradual Operations of former seas, to the agency of whose 

 waters the neighbourhood of this fair city especially, and 



