570 THE INFERIOR OOLITE OF THE COTTESWOLD HILLS. 



Upper Lias and the Pea-Grit Series appeared to have been very care- 

 fully studied by the Author with great detail. He hoped Mr. 

 Wethercd would continue his microscopical researches as to the 

 intimate structure of the Lower Oolites, which Avould doubtless alter 

 many views of sedimentation. 



Mr. H. B. AVooDWARi) agreed with Prof. Hull that in general 

 there was a fairly good divisional line between the Cephalopoda-bed 

 and overlying Inferior Oolite, notwithstanding the fact that the 

 original " Cephalopoda-bed" had been split up on palaeontological 

 grounds, and part of it put with the Interior Oolite, and part with 

 the Upper Lias. He maintained that the term " Midford Sands " was 

 better than that of " Transition Beds " used by the Author. He 

 believed, with Mr. Lucy, that there were pebbles of Oolite in some of 

 the lower beds of the Inferior Oolite. The occurrence, in different 

 layers of the same subdivision, of borings of Annelids and Litlio- 

 domi, showed that the Oolite had consolidated somewhat rapidly, 

 and in such a false-bedded series it was not unlikely that some layers 

 had been subjected to contemporaneous erosion. He asked the 

 Author if he had found Girvanella in the matrix of any of the 

 rocks, for the question was whether this organism had been a willing 

 or unwilling agent in the formation of the Pea-Grit concretions ; it 

 had occurred to both Mr. Teall and himself that the Girvanella 

 which was found coating the nuclei of the concretions might have 

 been derived mechanically from the calcareous mud of the sea-bed. 



The Rev. H. \Vti\'wooi) drew attention to the fact that the series 

 of beds which the writer had such an opportunity of studying in the 

 Cotteswold district did not exist in that near Bath. In some of the 

 sections there, and notably in that at Midford, the sands wei^e suc- 

 ceeded by a peculiar conglomeratic bed of Inferior Oolite, containing 

 rolled phosphatic and other pebbles of a foreign rock which he should 

 like Mr. Wethered to examine microscopically. Rliynclionella spinosa 

 occurred in this bed. 



The Author thanked the Meeting for the way in which his paper 

 had been received. In reply to Prof. Hull and Mr. H. B. Woodward, 

 he said that he did not propose to do away with the term " Midford 

 Sands " nor with that of " Cephalopoda-bed." Terms introduced by 

 William Smith and Dr. Wright should be respected. W^Lat he (the 

 Author) contended was that these two beds, with others above them, 

 belonged to a series which was transitional between the Upper Lias 

 and Inferior Oolite. That being so, he failed to see why the beds 

 occupying that position should not, as a whole, be identified by a 

 term expressing true character, namely. Transitional Series. 



With regard to the nature of Girvanella^ he had that day shown 

 some specimens to Mr. Geo. Murray at the Natural-History Museum, 

 South Kensington, and that gentleman had given him permission to 

 say that the structure was certainly organic. As to M^hether it was 

 vegetable or animal, Mr. Murray was in doubt, but the fact that the 

 tubes occur in dense compact wefts and never appear to anastomose 

 seemed to him to dispose of the view that they belonged to a per- 

 forating Alga such as Gomontia, &c., recently described by M. Bornet. 



