170 E. P. TOMES ON THE GEEAT-OOLITE MADEEPOEAEIA. 



graphical position of the bed from which, these fine specimens had 

 been taken,. Mr. Slatter, in answer to my inquiries, informed me 

 that the deposit was determined by Mr. John Jones, of Gloucester, 

 to lie between the Forest Marble and the Cornbrash. It is mentioned 

 by Dr. Lycett, in his little book on the Geology of the Cotteswold 

 Hills, and stated on the same authority to lie at the base of the 

 Cornbrash. Mr. Slatter further informs me that " the matrix in 

 which the corals are imbedded is a curious white marly clay, much 

 resembling the softer portions of the oolite marl of the Inferior 

 Oolite." No lumps of stone or rubble of any kind appear to have 

 been associated with the corals. This fine-grained deposit was 

 found to lie about three feet from the surface, and was itself about 

 a foot in thickness. In it the corals occurred so abundantly that a 

 large number could speedily be obtained by excavating. That the 

 matrix was eminently fitted for the preservation of the corals is 

 evident. In many specimens which have undergone no other 

 cleaning process than brushing in water, the details of all the 

 external parts are so fully retained that they can be studied with as 

 much ease as the same parts of a recent coral. But internally, as 

 is the case with so many corals of the Great Oolite, the parts are so 

 much altered by fossilization that structural characters cannot be 

 observed. 



Near to Burford, in Oxfordshire, by the side of the road leading to 

 Shipton-under-Whichwood, at a place called on the Ordnance Map 

 Caps Lodge, is a quarry in the Great Oolite which has supplied the 

 following section : — 



ft. in. 



1. Surface-soil 2 



2. Forest-marble 3 



3. Blue and white clay 1 6 



4. Hard stone in blocks having thin 



seams of clay 6 



5. A white and yellow muclstone, some- Isastrcsa limitata, I. explanu- 



times very soft, but held together ^«» Latimesandra lotharinga, 



by shells and corals 1 6 Cladophyllia Bdbeana, Con- 



vcxastrcea Waltoni, Stylina 

 conifera, Thamnastrce micro- 

 phylla, Microsolena excelsa. 



6. Hard stone like No. 4, and having Eeduced shells in great 



the character of true Great Oolite 5 abundance. 



The bed No. 5 in this quarry abounds in corals ; and the walls 

 around the premises near it, which are built With unhewn lumps of 

 the coral bed, have Isastrcece and Thamnastrcece projecting from 

 them in great abundance. The general facies of the corals at this 

 place much resembles that of the Fairfbrd corals. 



About ten or twelve miles to the north-west of this quarry* is a 

 cutting in the Great Oolite, on the Banbury and Cheltenham rail- 

 way, between Bourton-on-the-Water and Cheltenham, at a place 

 called Aylworth, in which is a thin seam of corals lying immedi- 



* North-west by west. 



