87 



Lias aitd Oolites. — When we consider the ttutnber of yfears dut-ing^ 

 which the oolitic system and the lias have been submitted to the re-^ 

 searches of geologists, it might be expected that few or no new fossils 

 remained to be discovered in them, but such is not the case. When- 

 ever fresh investigations are made, undescribed forms appear, and of 

 this we have just had a striking example in the neighbourhood of 

 Cheltenham, where one of our members, Mr. Buckman, has collected 

 a vast number of new species characterizing each stratum in the Lias 

 and Inferior Oolite, and has published a most instructive tabular 

 view, illustrating much more completely than myself, the order 

 which I formerly pointed out to this Society. He has in short detected 

 many undescribed organic remains, throughout the series from the 

 Lower Lias to the Stonesfield Slate inclusive, some of which will 

 be figured in a new edition of the outline of the Geology of the 

 neighbourhood of Cheltenham^ 



And here, whilst speaking of detailed seetiofis of the same forma- 

 tion in distant localities, I request my countrymen, who have studied 

 this portion of the series, and who may travel through Germany, not 

 to omit to visit the noble sections of lias exposed at Banz in Upper 

 Franconia, to which I called your attention nine years ago, and which 

 have since been grouped and described by M. von Buch in his ge- 

 neral work on the Jura formations. In mentioning this foreign lo- 

 cality, I specially4'ecommend to your notice a detailed tabular view, 

 by M. Theodori of Banz, of the strata between the Keuper and the 

 Inferior Oolite. With one sandstone at its summit and another at 

 its base, the great blue lias portion of the formation is separated into 

 no less than forty-six bands, each of which is distinguished by either 

 peculiar mineral or zoological characters, the upper portion being 



Buckland, that he has re-discovered among the mislaid tveasiirea of his 

 museum, cevtain saurian remains from Guy's Cliff to wliich much interest 

 was attached, and that Professor Owen has pronounced them to belong to 

 the species of Cyl'mdricodon described by Jager from the Keupev sandstone 

 of Wiivtemburg. When Mr. Strickland and myself contended that the sand- 

 stone of Guy's Cliff and Warwick did not represent the Keuper, we did so 

 from positive stratigraphical evidence, which proved that a thick formation 

 of marl and sandstone was interpolated between the base of the Lias and 

 the Warwick sandstone. We may, indeed, have been carried too far in say- 

 ing that the discovery of the same species of saurian described by Jager 

 must determine the age of the rock ; for we are not yet sufficiently ac- 

 quainted with the distribution of the fossils of the Trias, to know wliethei' 

 some species may not be common to the whole of that group, and in Eng- 

 land, where the niuschelkalk is Avanting, it is no easy matter to draw the 

 line of zoological demarcation between the Keuper and Binder sandstones.. 

 In the mean time it will be admitted, that Mr. S^tr^ckland and myself 

 pointed Out, for the first time, an upper stage in the series of the New Red 

 Sandstone of England, which, containing peculiar organic remains, was 

 proved to be distinct from the underlying masses of red sandstone (V/aV- 

 wick, &e.), and whatever may be the names attached to them, these two- 

 formations must henceforward be distinguished from each other in linglish 

 geology. 



