A. C. G. Cameron — Kellan-ayn Beds near Bedford. 67 



partial occurrence only, and, if not entirely wanting in the Midland 

 districts, at least so attenuated as to be inseparable from the Oxford 

 Clay. For reasons such as these the Kellaways were not known in 

 Bedfordshire until of late years — nothing of the kind having been 

 recorded ; the preponderance of yellow sand and loam on the sides 

 of the valley around Bedford being looked upon as an extension 

 merely up the slopes of the sand and gravel prevailing in the town. 

 Large areas of building land have recently been covered with houses 

 at Bedford, and there is a constant demand for bricks and lime. 

 Brickmaking is carried on with energy, and the brickfields and 

 stone-pits are prominent objects of interest in the neighbourhood of 

 the town. Pits are opened at the outcrop of the Kellaways and 

 carried down into Great Oolite through Lower Oxford (selenite 

 clay), Cornbrash and purplish Cornbrash clay. In the making of 

 bricks the Lower Oxford and the Kellaways loam or " lam earth," 

 as it is called, are mixed, lessening the liability in the clay to 

 contract and crack in drying, as happens when the Lower Oxford, 

 the ' strong ' clay, is used alone. 



These Oolite divisions are seen to great advantage in the valley 

 of the Ouse, as they lie upon each side of the river. Those extra- 

 ordinary concretionary stones that characterize the Kellaways, jut 

 out in the valley and stand about in some brickyard sections, in 

 clusters, like gigantic fungi. 



There is an admirable display of these singular stones at Oakley 

 Hill, near Bedford. The railway passes in a cutting there through 

 a tongue of land that juts out into the valley from the amphitheatre 

 of hills around, and the cutting which is now being widened and 

 cut back towards the hills, has laid bare a considerable length of 

 Upper Oxford, Kellaways rock and sand. The base of the Kellaways 

 is not reached, but outcrops lower down with other underlying beds, 

 round the flanks of the hill. Big stones, smooth and rounded, stand 

 out in relief in the sides of the cutting, the effect being heightened 

 b}'' the softened aspect and sombre hues of the clay above. These 

 also stood in rows upon the sand before being broken up, to make 

 way for the rails. One of the workmen likened them to boulders 

 put down for stepping-stones, adding that there must have been 

 " a flood there at one time." Some of these huge stones measure 

 thirty feet in circumference. Where the sand is dug away and 

 they stand each upon its own pedestal of sand, the resemblance to 

 prodigous mushrooms is almost more than fanciful. Sometimes two 

 stones are joined by a neck forming twin stones, when this semblance 

 is lost in the figure of an hour-glass or the number eight. Where 

 many stones are near together — and there are twenty or thirty now 

 and then — these all but form beds of hard sandstone. 



In some cases they are isolated and bare on the bright yellow 

 sand, and the mind, reverts to the sea and the sands and the blocks 

 of stone one sees there when the tide is out. 



Prof. Harker gives an account of the Kellaways beds exposed in 

 the railway cutting at South Cerney, near Cirencester, and with these 

 the beds at Oakley are identical. The shelly bands in the Bedford 



