56 GASTEROPODA OP THE INFERIOR OOLITE. 



have been taken to represent the Sands of the Gloucestershire Cephalopoda-bed. 

 In default of fossil evidence this is a dangerous assumption, since the whole of the 

 Lower Division of the Inferior Oolite is absent as a limestone, and may possibly be 

 represented by the upper portion of these same Midford Sands. 



Freshford. — This is a section in the Avon valley about four miles south-south- 

 east of Bath. Only a portion of the Upper Division of the Inferior Oolite is seen here. 

 It contaius a Clypeus-grit Fauna, and there are traces of the horizon of Nerincea 

 Guisei. 



The sections above detailed, from Clan Down to Freshford inclusive, may be 

 taken to give an idea of the general development of the Inferior Oolite in thelittle 

 known country between the Mendips and the Avon valley. Whether the Lower 

 Division is developed at all in that area is unknown to me. We should certainly 

 expect to find it on the escarpment, where possibly it exists without being quarried. 

 But opposite the escarpment, and about eight miles nearly due west of Twerton 

 Hill, occurs the remarkable outlier of 



Dundry Hill. — This place is one of the most classic in the annals of the Inferior 

 Oolite, since so many of Sowerby's types come from here ; and it has also furnished 

 the Bristol Museum with the greater part of the material so well elucidated by my 

 lamented friend, Tawney, in the ' Dundry Gasteropoda.' I have already pointed 

 out the anomalous character of this exposure of Inferior Oolite. It might be almost 

 regarded as constituting a district by itself, so curiously does it combine the 

 characters of No. 1 District with those of No. 2. Still, although it lies north of the 

 Mendips, we must hold that its affinities with the Inferior Oolite of Dorset and 

 Normandy far exceed any resemblance which it possesses to the main mass of the 

 Cotteswold Oolite. Judging from the fossils, it is probable that more than one 

 horizon has contributed its quota to this assemblage ; though perhaps the highest 

 beds are so loaded with massive Thamnastrcea as not to have afforded much space for 

 the accumulation of shells. In the present condition of the available exposures it 

 is by no means easy to construct an intelligible section of the Inferior Oolite in 

 this remarkable hill. Instead of going into the question of horizons we must be 

 content to take the fossils as we find them in the various museums — at least for 

 the present. 



The Cotteswold Hills. 



The range of the Cotteswolds may be said to commence north of the deep 

 valley of the Avon, whence it continues in an almost unbroken escarpment for many 

 miles. There are no exposures of any importance, as far as I am aware, until we 

 reach the neighbourhood of Little Sodbury, some ten or twelve miles from Bath. 

 This circumstance probably arises from the facility with which Carboniferous 



