128 Mr. Rofe's Observations on the 



resembles wood which had been penetrated by the teredo, and the tubular 

 cavities afterwards filled with sand. Covering- this is the bed of oyster-shells, 

 twenty-seven inches thick, but divided into two parts. In the lower, which is 

 thirteen inches thick, the oysters are imbedded in a brown clay, and are much 

 larger than in the upper, but are more difficult to procure perfect and to pre- 

 serve, as they rapidly fall to pieces when taken from the bed. In the upper, 

 which is fourteen inches thick, the shells are found in a bed of sand, contain- 

 ing minute green particles, and occasionally small green nodules and flints, 

 some of which are rolled and some angular. In both beds the shells are 

 accompanied with a considerable quantity of fishes' teeth. 



Resting on the oyster-shell bed is another of clay, nineteen inches thick, 

 parted by small seams of crystals of selenite; and on this are five feet of 

 quartzose sand, near the upper part of which is a bed of ochreous nodules, 

 from two to three inches thick, which yield an excellent pigment. The strata 

 above this, as far as I can observe, correspond with the statement in Dr. 

 Buckland's Memoir*, excepting that about six feet from the surface of the 

 hill, is a thin bed of shells not noticed in that paper, nor in a passage in the 

 Outlines of Messrs. Conybeare and W. Phillips, (p. 42.) when speaking of 

 this place ; or at page 39, where it is said, " There is not the smallest trace 

 of animal or vegetable remains in any of the strata of this formation at Read- 

 ing in Berkshire, except in the green sandf. " In this field, where the bed is 

 so near the surface, it is considerably decomposed and may easily escape 

 notice; but in other places in the neighbourhood, the matrix in which the 

 shells are imbedded is sufficiently hard to take a tolerable polish. 



The same beds have been worked through to the chalk, at spots on the 

 other side of the Kennet, and nearly in a line with the Katesgrove field. 

 They contain the sand with green particles and rolled and angular flints 

 covering the chalk, as at Katesgrove, and occasionally oyster-shells and teeth. 

 In making the new road into the town, on the eastern side, over the corpora- 

 tion property, the upper part of the chalk has been exposed and is covered 

 with sand and rolled pebbles, but there are very few of the green particles, 

 and neither teeth nor shells. In this spot the chalk rises very near the sur- 

 face, and the sand with the pebble bed is very irregular in its thickness, 

 and is covered with the vegetable earth ; but in the upper part of a field on 

 the side of the Oakingham road, immediately under the soil, are thick beds of 

 gravel, containing chalk flints, some of them very little rolled, and abundance 



* Geological Transactions, 1st Series, vol. iv. p. 278. 



t In the section presented in July 1837, the bed was twelve feet below the surface, and about 

 ten inches thick. 



