28 ME. G. w. LAMPLrGK 01^ THE jris'CTiois^ OF [vol. Ixxviii, 



roadside between Leigh ton and Shenley Hill (see fig. 1, p. 2), as I 

 could find no other in the neighbourhood ' north of Leighton,' and 

 no other was marked on my 6-inch Ordnance map. But recently, 

 on looking up an earlier edition of the same map (Sheet, Beds. 

 2SN.E.), I notice that a 'clay^jit and brickyard,' of wdiich there 

 is now little or no trace, is shown just outside the fence enclosing 

 the Heath House sandpit on the south, extending westwards from 

 it. Jukes-Browne's description fits these circumstances exactly, 

 and what I wrongly presumed to be a rather vague localization 

 is thus made quite clear. 



Some 3"ears later (1897) the pit w^as visited by the Geologists' 

 Association, when already in disuse, but with better exposures than 

 now, and a short account of it was given by A. C. G. Cameron in 

 his report on the excursion. ^ 



This was supplemented by some valuable notes by Dr. A. M. 

 Davies in his paper on ' The Base of the Gault in Eastern England,' ^ 

 as follows : — 



' As I imderstand that the pit will soon be closed over, it may be well to 

 give a full list of fossils from it. These were in part collected by my wife on 

 the visit of the Geologists' Association, partly by myself on a later occasion. 

 All except the belemnites are phosphatized. [List] Hoplites interrwptusj^ 

 H. tuherculatus, H. lautus (?) (a worn fragment), ScMcenhachia inflata, 

 Belemnites inhii^nus (abundant), Solarium, De7itali^im, Inoceramas concen- 

 fricus, I. svlcatus ; fish-scales ; fish-coprolites.' 



' The mixture of Upper and Lower Gault fossils is striking, but has been 

 already noted for this district by Mr. Jukes-Browne {_ref. "Handbook of 

 Historical Geology, p. 412 "]....! should, however, add that some thickness 

 of Gault is exposed at Heath (at least 15 feet, speaking from memory), and 

 that owing to the large extent of slip no fossils could be obtained actually in 

 place, so that some may have come from a higher zone than others.' 



In their account of the section. Dr. Kitchin & Mr. Pringle {op. 

 cif. p. 60) regard the whole of the clay as Upper Gault, and claim 

 that the sequence here proves the inversion of the Gault of Harris's 

 pit. But a comparison of the two sections, in the light of the 

 information now brought together, will show that they agree in 

 all essential particulars, except in the absence here of the Silty 

 beds (2). Some of the nodules which I found on the upper slopes 

 of the Heath House pit are ' compoimd ' phosphates similar to the 

 nodules in 5 a at Shenley and including the same fossils, and are 

 probably from the same nodule-bed as that of the adjacent brick- 

 3^ard described by Jukes-Browne, as quoted above. 



^ Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xv (1897) p. 184. 



2 Geol. Mag. 1899, pp. 160-61. 



•^ Dr. A. M. Davies informs me that these determinations of the ammonites 

 stand in need of correction. The naming of H. tuherculatus has been con- 

 firmed, but the supposed H. interruphis is probably an Anahoplites of the 

 ' splendens ' group, and the lautus ? is an indeterminable specimen, 



I am indebted to Dr, Davies for the loan of the specimens ; several are in 

 the state of ' compound ' phosphatic nodules, exactly like those of the nodule- 

 bed near the top of Harris's i^it, Shenley Hill (see p. 9). 



