Vol. 60.] THE KETJPER AND RHAETIC IX GLOUCESTERSHIRE, ETC. 353 



These details he observed when the cutting was in the course of 

 excavation. Mr. H. B. Woodward, 1 however, states that ' dark 

 shaly marls,' belonging to the Rhaetic, are faulted against the 

 Keuper. The phenomena noted by Lucy, and explained by that 

 author as being due to the absence of certain deposits, may, of 

 course, be the result of a fault with some overthrust. I retrain 

 from mentioning the section further, than to express the hope that 

 if any sections of these beds are opened the fact will be at once 

 made known. 



At Denny Hill, distant from Lassington a little over 4 miles, the 

 Bone-Bed is seen resting directly upon the 'Tea-Green Marls.' 

 This section has been recently described in the ' Proceedings of the 

 Cotteswold Naturalists' Field-Club ', 2 and from that record it will 

 be noticed that the several deposits there visible above the Bone- 

 Bed agree closely with the equivalent beds at Garden Cliff. The 

 absence of the well-known ' Pullast m-Sandstones ' of Garden Cliff 

 is at once apparent ; and, since at Denny Hill the Bone-Bed rests 

 directly upon the marls of the Keuper Series, it follows that (3 feet 

 5 inches 3 of Rhaetic deposit — as seen below the Bone-Bed at 

 Garden Cliff — are absent here, and this thickness is, of course, 

 considerable when it is remembered that the true English Rhaetic 

 seldom exceeds 35 feet in thickness. 



At Chaxhill, about 2 miles south-west by west of Denny Hill, 

 the 'Pidlastr a Sandstones ' are present; the total thickness of the 

 deposit below the Bone-Bed and above the Keuper Marls is 7 feet 

 2 inches i : a slight increase really upon the Garden-Cliff section, 

 because of the more equal thickness of the several beds. 



As the late Robert Etheridge, F.R.S., has written, it is probable 

 that 



' this chief Bone-Bed [So. 15 in my sections] was synchronously deposited over 

 the area it now occupies in the West and South-West of England." 5 



This ' chief Bone-Bed ' is seen at Sedbury Cliff on the Severn, near 

 Chepstow, resting upon the ' Tea-Green Marls,' with included rolled 

 fragments of that rock. The Aust and Sedbury sections, however, 

 are outside the district under consideration, and, moreover, it is 

 probable that a barrier of Palaeozoic rocks intervened between them 

 and the Garden-Cliff section. That such a barrier, more or less 

 continuous, must have existed in early Rhaetic times is shown by 

 the Rhaetic Beds resting upon the Carboniferous Limestone in 

 Tortworth Park, 6 and evidence of land in the same epoch is to be 

 had in the railway-cutting at Lilliput, near Yate. If, then, as 

 seems most probable, a Palaeozoic barrier separated the Aust gulf 

 from the stretch of water about Garden Cliff, it may supply an 

 answer in the affirmative to Etherid°:e's statement that the strata 



'o v 



- Mem. Geol. Surv. : 'The Jurassic Rocks of Britain 9 vol. iii (]893) 'The 

 Lias ' p. 141. 



2 Yol. xiv (1903) p. 254. 



3 Maximum, 7 feet 9 inches. 4 Maximum, 7 feet 8 inches. 

 5 Proc. Cotteswold Nat F.-C. vol. iii (1865) p. 224. 



Ibid. p. 234. . ' 



