254 DE. C. A. MATLEY ON THE [Jime I912, 



Sandstones occur in the Marls of the English Midlands, I adopt 

 a suggestion made to me some years ago by Prof. Charles 

 Lapworth, and call it the Arden Sandstone, in view of its 

 important development in the area of the old Eorest of Arden. 

 As I include with the sandstone the associated grey shales and 

 marls, and as the sandstone is often so feebly developed as to be 

 almost absent, it will be more exact to use the term Sandstone 

 Group in speaking of this sub-formation. 



III. HisTOKY OE Previous Eeseieches. 



The presence of a ' peculiar Zone of Sandstone ' intercalated in 

 the Eed or Saliferous Marls was first made known in 1837 by 

 Murchison & Strickland (37), in a paper communicated to this 

 Society. They traced the zone from the borders of Gloucestershire 

 through Worcestershire into Warwickshire, described its litho- 

 logical character faithfully, and found that it occupied the same 

 stratigraphical position throughout — a position which, though 

 acknowledged by them to be difficult to ascertain with precision, 

 they estimated to be (p. 332) ' separated from the Lias by at least 

 200 feet of red and green marls." As regards the area with which 

 we are now concerned, they described the sections at Shrewley, 

 Eowington, and Oversley Lodge near Alcester ; and so carefully had 

 they explored the district, that they record the presence of the zone 

 at the great majority of the localities shown on the Geological 

 Survey map some seventeen years later. They noted also the 

 presence of organic remains in the zone at Shrewley Common 

 and elsewhere, including fish-remains, batrachian footprints, and 

 Posidonomya (now Estlieria) minuta. 



In 1854 the Geological Survey 1-inch map of this district 

 (quarter-sheets 54, X.E. & S.E.) appeared, in which this sandstone 

 band is traced with considerable accuracy and with as much 

 completeness as was to be expected from a survey carried out on a 

 1-inch scale ; but, owing to the omission of the zone from a number 

 of places where it has now been found to occur, the value of the 

 map as a guide to the geological structure of this portion of the 

 country is much lessened. In 1859 Mr. H. H. Howell gave an 

 explanation of the map in the Survey Memoir on the Warwickshire 

 Coalfield. He found that the sandstones occurring in the Marls 

 around that coalfield occupy more than one horizon : those, for 

 instance, at Orton Hill in Leicestershire being found at a lower 

 level in the Marls than those near Henley-in-Arden. He recognized 

 that the sandstone outcrops at Shrewley, Lapworth Hill, Mows Hill, 

 Pinley Hill, and near Henley-in-Arden, etc., are all on the same 

 horizon ; but, as he omits any reference to the important detached 

 outcrops of the Alne Hills and the Alcester district in the south- 

 west and to the Knowle mass in the north, which lie closer to 

 the outcrops of the Lower Lias than does the Henley-in-Arden 

 sandstone, it is probable that he was uncertain whether they might 



