470 H. B. Woodward—WNotes on Jurassic Rocks. 
It is true that at Swindon and Hartwell the Lower Portland Beds 
are more intimately connected, on stratigraphical grounds, with the 
Kimeridge Clay than with the Upper Portland Beds; but this is 
not the case on the Dorsetshire coast, where no conglomeratic band 
has been met with at the base of the Portland Stone. 
V.—Furraer Nore on toe Miprorp Sanps.1. By Horace B. 
Woopwarb, F.G.8., of the Geological Survey of Hngland and 
Wales. 
[Communicated by permission of the Director-General of the Geological Survey. ] 
HE term Midford Sands, introduced in 1871 by Professor Phillips, 
has been accepted by many geologists because it avoided the 
confusion that had arisen from the use by some authorities of the 
term Inferior Oolite Sands, and by others of Upper Lias Sands. 
At Midford the upper portion of the Inferior Oolite (zone of 
Ammonites Parkinsoni) rests directly on the Sands, whereas in other 
parts of Somersetshire, in Dorsetshire and Gloucestershire, the lower 
portion of the Inferior Oolite (comprising the zones of A. Humphries- 
tanus and A. Murchisone) is present above the Sands. In the 
absence of paleeontological evidence, it has been questioned whether 
the Midford Sands are really equivalent to the Sands in other parts 
of the south-west of England. Hence other local names, e.g. the 
Yeovil and Bridport Sands, and the Cotteswold Sands, have been 
introduced. 
Regarding the zone of Ammonites opalinus and the Gloucestershire 
Cephalopoda-bed as a portion of the Cotteswold Sands, there is no 
doubt about their correlation with the Sands of Bridport and Yeovil. 
Two species of Ammonites (A. striatulus and A. aalensis) have been 
obtained by the Rev. H. H. Winwood from the Midford Sands. The 
latter of these species was recorded by myself, on the authority of 
Mr. Etheridge, in 1876, but its occurrence has been overlooked. 
More recently I have seen in the William-Smith Collection in the 
British Museum, an Ammonite from the Coal-canal at Midford; and 
this has been identified by Mr. Etheridge and Mr. R. B. Newton, as 
very near to, if not identical with A. Levesque, a species recorded 
by Dr. Lycett from the Gloucestershire Cephalopoda Bed. These 
species show that the Midford Sands belong to the same general 
horizon as the Sands of Gloucestershire and Dorsetshire, so that 
there is no adequate reason for discarding the name Midford Sands. 
If the beds near Bath have not proved so fossiliferous as those in 
other localities, there is no reason why they should remain so; for 
in Dorsetshire there are many sections where the beds appear barren, 
in close proximity with other exposures that yield an abundant fauna. 
1 A previous Note on the Midford Sands was published in the GEoLociIcaL 
MaGazine, 1872, p. 513. 
