218 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



we find few remains of large animals, either fishes or 

 reptiles. For a long time, allowing of the deposit of 

 near three hundred feet of strata in great part fossili- 

 ferous, and almost uniform in character over a consi- 

 derable extent of country, there were no important 

 changes, but the evidence that we at present possess, 

 although imperfect, renders it not unlikely that 

 depression might be going on at intervals. 



At length, however, and still in the early stage of 

 the deposit of the oolitic rocks, a bed of clay ap- 

 pears partially covering the calcareous deposits in the 

 south and west of England; and contemporaneously 

 in other districts appears the " Stonesfield slate," a 

 fissile limestone already alluded to, occurring near 

 Oxford, a somewhat similar slaty rag at Oolley 

 Weston, in Northamptonshire, and some gritty and 

 shaly beds in the north of England, well seen on the 

 coast of Yorkshire, near Scarborough, while there 

 were also other beds occurring still further to the 

 north at Brora, in Sutherlandshire. The evidences 

 of adjacent land are here not to be questioned, and 

 we have now to consider what may have been the 

 nature and condition of this land, and its relation to 

 the deposits preceding and succeeding the date of its 

 formation. 



It is, on the whole, not unlikely that partial ele- 

 vation of the sea-bottom was in some way connected 

 with the interesting set of phenomena now under 

 discussion. The bed of clay first mentioned rests on 

 the oolitic rock; and at the junction of the two there 

 are vast multitudes of the remains of the Apiocrinite, 

 a pretty encrinite, which appears to have been de- 

 stroyed suddenly and in great multitudes, probably 



