1856.] BRODIE UPPER KEtTPER SANDSTONE. 375 



Ft. in, 



3. Green Marl 21 



4. More finely grained sandstone, more or less 



ripple-marked ; with footsteps of Lahyrin- 

 thodon 2 3 



5. Green Marl 2 



6. Hard workable sandstone ("bottom bed"), 



the only good building-stone of the locality ; 



with imperfect casts of Posidonia 3 6 



7. Thin beds of sandstone, divided by green •» 



marls; with remains of plants {Voltzia, 

 Calamites ?, and Fucoides ?) . This is best 

 seen at Rowington 10 



8. Red Marl. 

 Beds horizontal. 



The last 10 or 15 feet of sandstone and marl reposing immediately 

 on the red marl are not quarried here ; but at Rowington, on the 

 Canal-bank, about a mile and a half to the west, these are better 

 seen ; and from them I have procured a small series of imperfect 

 remains of Plants, some of which appear to belong to Voltzia ondi 

 Calamites 1y and some small Fruits not easily determined. Fucoids 

 (or markings such as are usually referred to Fucoids) occur in more 

 or less abundance throughout, especially in the marls. 



The Warwickshire Keuper agrees both lithologically and zoologi- 

 cally with that of Worcestershire. In Mr. Symonds's paper * on 

 that formation at Pendock, it will be seen that the green marls are 

 thicker and more indurated, and the gritty sandstone, which he calls 

 " osseous conglomerate," is a much finer band at Shrewley, and with 

 fewer traces of bones and teeth, and no particles of carbonaceous 

 matter (which often struck me when examining the quarry at Pen- 

 dock), although identical with it in every other respect. The plant- 

 beds at the bottom also seem to be similar to those at Rowington. 



The New Red Sandstone group in England is on the whole, as is 

 well known, by no means rich in organic remains ; if the beds for- 

 merly classed as " Bunter " are correctly assigned to the Permian, 

 we have only the Keuper to afford us any insight into the palaeonto- 

 logical history of that period, and the fossils are neither numerous 

 nor well preserved. It is singular too, that the little Posidonia 

 should be the only shell t at present known in strata of such extent 

 and thickness as the Trias, — and the more so, as there seems no 

 reason why the sea should nOt have been tenanted by other contem- 

 porary forms of MoUusks equally suitable to the same conditions 

 of marine life. The prevalence of peroxide of iron in the overlying 

 and underlying red marls may account for the absence or extreme 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.vol. xi. p. 450. 



f Since the above was in type, Mr. Symonds has shown me a little shell 

 which he had detected in the Keuper at Pendock, quite distinct from the PosU 

 donia ; and I have an imperfect cast of what appears to be another genus, from 

 the Shrewley sandstone. [October 1856.— P. B. B.] 



