THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE. 



NEW SERIES. DECADE IV. VOL. IV. 



No. III.— MAECH, 1897. 



(D:Eixc3-j:i<rj^Xj .a^irticles. 



I. — Geology of the London Extension of the Manchester, 

 Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway. Part II : Eugby to 



QUAINTON EoaD, near AyLESBURY.' 



By Horace B. Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S. 

 (Communicated by permission uf the Director-General of the Geological Survey.) 



THE cuttings along this new line of railway from Annesley to 

 a little south of Rugby have been described by Mr. Fox- 

 Strangways, and it is now proposed to note the chief geological 

 features along the line as far as Quainton Road, near Aylesbury. 

 This portion of the railway crosses the country from north to south 

 and south-east for a distance of about 35 miles. The following 

 notes were made partly in November, 1895, when the cuttings 

 were examined from Willoughby, near Rugby, to Helmdon ; and 

 partly in May of the following year, when the examination was 

 continued to Quainton Road. 



Traversing, as this railway does, a hilly country from 200 to nearly 

 600 feet above sea-level, and encountering over the greater part 

 of the distance heavy clays, a considerable breadth of ground has 

 been occupied, whether by cuttings or embankments. The cuttings 

 have thus exposed a fine series of sections from Lower Lias to 

 Oxford Clajs and also of Glacial Drifts. 



Commencing about a mile north of Willoughby, near Braunston, 

 and proceeding southwards, there are three shallow cuttings in the 

 Lower Lias, showing stiff grey marly clay, overlain by fossiliferous 

 clay with hard liinestone-nodules. These nodules have assumed, 

 fantastic forms, like many chalk-flints, differing in a marked way 

 from the smooth and somewhat ferruginous cement-stones found 

 a little higher in the series. The occurrence of many Belemnites, 

 together with Grypheea obliquata, Pecten, Plicatula spinosa, and 

 Bhynchonella, suggested that here we have equivalents of the strata 

 at Fenny Corapton, which long ago yielded so many fossils of the 

 zones of Ammonites armntiis and A. Jamesoni to the late Thomas 

 Beesley, of Banbury. Further observations confirmed this view. 

 The strata dip gently to the south, and the succeeding dej)osits 



^ The substance of this paper was communicated to the Liverpool Meeting of the 

 British Association in 189B. 



DBCADB IV. VOL. IV. — NO. III. 7 



