S42 Professor Edward Hull — The Toarcian of Bredon Hill. 



discovered that the species of Ammonites, Nautili, and Belemnites 

 were identical with those from the Upper Lias of Whitby, he found 

 it impossible to resist the conclusion that the " Ammonite bed " 

 (which he renamed the " Cephalopoda bed " in order to give it 

 a wider signification), together with the underlying so-called "Inferior 

 Oolite Sands," ought to be included in the Liassic rather than in 

 the Oolitic series. Happily, about the same time D'Orbigny's work^ 

 made its appearance, wherein nearly all the Cephalopoda from the 

 Ammonite bed are figured and described as " Toarcian " or Upper 

 Lias forms, completely confirming Dr. Wright's conclusions, which 

 were fully developed by the author in his elaborate paper " On 

 the Palgeontological and Stratigraphical Kelations of the so-called 

 Sands of the Inferior Oolite," read before the Geological Society 

 in 1856.^ Thus this important rectification of the succession of the 

 Jurassic series of England was finally settled. Will it be believed 

 that after the lapse of nearly half a century Mr, S. S. Buckman 

 claims in his paper just published to have been the happy individual 

 to whom the credit of so great a discovery ought to be awarded ! 

 For what does he say ? It is this : — " Now that the faunal contents 

 of the various sands are definitely known, the old, much-debated 

 question, whether the sands are Liassic or Oolitic, may be considered 

 as settled." The much-debated question was settled by Dr. Wright 

 in 1856, and was accepted by the Geological Survey upon the 

 publication of the memoir on the " Geology of the Country around 

 Cheltenham" published in the year following. It is remarkable 

 that throughout his paper, Mr. Buckman persists in calling the 

 "Upper Lias Sands" of Wright the " Cotteswold Sands" and 

 the " Mid ford Sands," ^ the latter a name unknown to geologists in 

 general, and adding another to the long list of fanciful names which 

 some authors amuse themselves by inventing. 



Eeverting to Mr. Buckman's paper, I am perplexed to find out 

 where the author got hold of the idea, which he says " stands in the 

 maps and textbooks," that the beds of the hifrontis-falciferi, which 

 are only 10 feet thick at Wotton, had increased to 380 feet at 

 Bredon Hill. Do the maps and textbooks referred to include 

 those of the Geological Survey ? If they do, I venture to assure 

 Mr. Buckman that he is entirely mistaken. The 10 feet of clay at the 

 base of the Upper Lias at Wotton is certainly not the representative 

 of the entire Upper Lias at Bredon Hill. The idea is too absurd to 

 be entertained for a moment, and, as Mr. Whitaker in the discussion 

 points out, the Survey did not profess to theorize about fossil zones. 

 The view which I myself held, and which was that, I believe, of my 

 colleagues of the Survey, that the sands of Wotton with the clays 



^ "Prodrome de Paleontologie Stratigraphique," t. i, ii, iii. 



2 Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xii, p. 292. I shalluot forget the day, some time in 1855, 

 on which Dr. Wright took me up Avith him to Frocester Hill to collect specimens 

 from the Cephalopoda bed which are there so abundantly stored away in nature's 

 museum. It was a revelation to me to see forms of Ammonites, which I knew to be 

 Upper Liassic, come forth from the base of the Oolitic cliff. 



^ [The name " Midford Sands" was given, in 1871, by Professor Phillips to the 

 sands which occur between the Upper Lias Clay and the Inferior Oolite. (Geol. 

 Oxford, p. lis.)— Edit. Geol. Mag.] 



