Notices of Memoirs — StonesfieM Slate Section. 463 



and your Secretary ^ have worked at some of the debatable beds 

 above the Clypeus grit, one of the highest of the Cotswold divisions 

 of the Inferior Oolite. To the bulk of these beds has been given 

 the name of the " Chipping Norton Limestone " by Mr. Hudleston, 

 and though the beds have not been reached in the section, they may 

 be seen in the lane sections and near the spring on the banks of the 

 Evenlode, south of Stonesfield. Your Secretary in 1892-93 sank 

 a shaft near Ditchley, Oxon, to find out the true position of the 

 Slate beds there ; but of this an account will be published elsewhere. 



The progress of the work, so far, at Stocky Bank, Stonesfield, has 

 consisted in scarping the bank for 33 feet, and in continuing the 

 section by carrying a shaft of 20 feet in depth through the lower 

 bank. The purpose of the work has been so far successfully carried 

 out by showing the existence of 30 feet of rock with some thin clay 

 courses below the Slate. These limestones and clays (see accom- 

 panying section) are of Great Oolite type. To reach the Clypeus 

 grit will need an extension of time and work. 



Your Secretary has, by the discovery of numerous species of 

 corals on the ploughed fields on the bank top, been able to define 

 the Coral bed (Rift bed) ^ so prominent a feature in the near section 

 at Ashford bridge. Seventeen feet below the coral bed a course of 

 Slate is met with, almost thinned oat at that point, an^ only from 

 5 to 7 inches in thickness ; the total thickness af it and th-6 asso- 

 ciated beds (10, 12, 13 of the section) being about 5 feet. The 

 usual fossils, Trigonia impressa, etc., occur. In the lower limestones, 

 15 and 17, are greenish clay inclusions. 



The great mass of buff limestone below the slate is almost un- 

 fossiliferous, and neither its mineralogical character nor its few fossils 

 give sure evidence of its relationship to neighbouring beds. 



Prominent in the lower half of the section is the breaking up of 

 the calcareous series by small clay beds, and of these No. 23, with 

 its dark compact clays, is in part made up of oyster-shell fragments. 

 It contains numerous compressed shells, Ferna quadrata, Nneula, etc., 

 but washings of the beds yield hardly any microzoa. The lime- 

 stone above the clay yields well-known Great Oolite shells, Jf^i^ks 

 Soioerhyanus, Bhjclionella concinna, and Ostrea Sowerhyi. The 

 shelly limestone below the clay is in part an Oyster lumachelle, 

 and passes into a blue-hearted limestone with Perna quadrata, large 

 CyprincB, Corhda, and Macrodon. Here, again, both petrological 

 facies and fauna are dissimilar to any of our known Oxfordshire 

 Oolitic rocks and, like each of the succeeding lower beds, should be 

 classed as Great Oolite ; one of the latter, a hard, very oolitic free- 

 stone, has also as distinctive a character. 



In conclusion, it should be stated that though, when Prof. Ed, 

 Hull reported to your Association at its Oxford meeting, thirty- 

 four years ago (1860), the presence of seventy feet of Great Oolite 

 limestone under the Stonesfield Slate, it seemed to be an over- 



1 E. A. "Walford, " On the Eelation of the so-called Northampton Sand of North 

 Oxon to Clypeus Grit," a.J.G.S., vol. xxxix. p. 235. 



2 E. A. Walford, Q.J.G.S. vol. xxxix. p. 230. 



