70 GASTEROPODA OF THE INFERIOR OOLITE. 



more especially in Gasteropoda. When we bear in mind that some of the best 

 collectors, and the most noted palaeontologists, have been connected with the 

 Cotteswolds for years, it must be clear that this inferiority cannot be due to 

 want of research. In fact the country from Wootton-under-Edge to Cleeve Cloud 

 is, above all others, the classic ground of the Inferior Oolite. It is true that in 

 some portions of the range, and on some horizons, a considerable number of casts 

 and badly preserved specimens of Gasteropoda may reward the labours of the 

 collector. But how rare are really good fossils ? If it were not for the Nerinaeas, 

 whose critical points are, perhaps, more internal than external, the show would be 

 but a poor one, when we reflect on the many years that these beds have been 

 under contribution. 



There is another point, too, of some significance. Apart from mere specific 

 names, such as help to make up a percentage comparison, there can be no doubt 

 that the Gasteropod Fauna of the Great Oolite, as developed at Minchinhampton, 

 has far more resemblance to that of the Inferior Oolite, which underlies it, than it 

 has to the Gasteropod Fauna of the Inferior Oolite in the Dorset District. Greater 

 similarity of facies may in parts account for this, but is there nothing due to the 

 score of locality ? Such questions are interesting, and, if taken up and worked out 

 by younger palaeontologists, may some day lead to conclusions of importance. 



Lastly, it would seem that the Ammonite-zones are not quite so regular and well 

 defined in the Cotteswolds as they are in Dorsetshire. When the question 

 comes to be worked out, this may not prove to be the case ; nor is it my business 

 in the present instance to investigate it. But when we see such an anomalous 

 assemblage of Ammonites as occurs for instance in the Gryphite-grit (teste Mr. 

 Witchell's collection), we naturally wonder how this series can be made to fit in 

 with the Dorsetshire sequence. 



Remainder of the Gotteswold District. 



East of the Yale of Moreton there is a mass of high ground constituting a sort of 

 repetition of the Cotteswold Hills. This region extends as far as the Valley of the 

 Cherwell. The Inferior Oolite is variously developed, but on the whole the Glypeus- 

 grit is the main representative, at least near Chipping-Norton. The Gasteropoda 

 in these beds of Inferior Oolite age are not sufficiently numerous or important to 

 warrant many details being given here. The most important section is on the new 

 railway near Hook Norton, where on both sides of a tunnel a more or less complete 

 sequence of the Inferior Oolite may be seen. This has been fully described by Mr. 

 Walford (' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc.,' 1883, p. 224). 



Hook Nohton. — Though the Inferior Oolite is now verging towards the region 

 where it undergoes further modification and a partial eclipse, before assuming 



