144 THE BATH OOLITE PERIOD. CHAP. 



These appearances are not infrequent in beds near the top of the 

 ragstone series, as about Broadway Hill, above Andover's Ford, 

 near Pewsdown, and Northleach. 



Oolite marl. This layer, though seldom more than seven feet in 

 thickness, extends over the whole space from Leckhampton to 

 Cleeve-Cloud, Broadway, and Bourton-on-the-Hill, and every- 

 where yields abundance of one fossil, Terebratula fimbria, which is 

 hardly known elsewhere. What is a little remarkable, Terebratula 

 maxillata (a shell common in the upper beds of the Great oolite) 

 is found in this marl in the district near Cheltenham. A good 

 locality for this marl is in descending the hill on the road from 

 Wisley Hill to Seven Springs. Dr. Wright regards the oolitic marl 

 as a disturbed portion of a coral bed in the oolitic sea a sort of 

 aggregated ' coral-mud." 



Upper Freestone. A thick-bedded oolite, of coarse texture ; occa- 

 sionally traversed by veins of fibrous iron oxide (haematite), and 

 more frequently stained yellow by diffused iron carbonate. This 

 stone is quarried largely at Broadway and Stanway, yielding large 

 and excellent troughs, slabs, coping, etc. But few fossils in it : 

 Terebratula fimbria is mentioned by Wright. 



Ragstone. This is a series of rough shelly sandy limestone, with 

 layers of marl and sandstone, in which, especially about the upper 

 part, are many trigonia?, limae, gryphites, terebratula3, trichites, etc. 

 The uppermost surface is occasionally bored by lithodomi ; and the 

 same fact is noticed in the lowest hard bed about Bourton, 

 Naunton, and Birdlip. In several districts, especially about Coles- 

 bourn, Stow, Churchill, Ascott, and Burford, the ragstone is 

 represented by a white rubbly oolite, uncommonly full of Clypeus 

 Plotii ; and this only a few feet thick, as we go south-eastward, is 

 all that remains of the thick Inferior oolite of Cheltenham. The 

 fossils vanish in the same proportion, so that in the lower part 

 of the Vale of the Cherwell hardly any record of the older life of 

 the oolitic period remains, beyond a few species of wide range or 

 doubtful identity. 



Still it is to be observed that almost everywhere in the large 

 region between Evenlode and Cherwell traces, more or less clear, 

 of the Inferior oolite period present themselves. 



About Charlbury beds of white oolite or ragstone lie on the 

 upper lias, thus described in my note-book, 1855 : 



