OF THE INFERIOR OOLITE OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 265 



as at Frocester and Haresfield Hills. If they are called Pea Grit in 

 one section and something different in the others confusion is created, 

 and a stranger is likely to fiud it difficult to understand the sequence 

 of the beds however carefully examined. 



The earlier geologists have fully described the Pea Grit and the 

 beds below, and the extension of the latter from Cleeve Hill to Pro- 

 cester Hill ; but they appear to have imagined that the oolitic lime- 

 stone at Procester and Haresfield Hills was part of the freestone 

 series above the Pea Grit, and that the brown sandy limestone near 

 the base represented the Pea Grit and ferruginous pisolitic beds of 

 Leckhampton ; but it will be shown that if the Pea Grit is traced 

 from Leckhampton to Birdlip, and thence along the escarpment 

 of the Cotteswolds, it is found to pass over Haresfield Hill on a 

 horizon 20 feet above the brown beds, and is continuous for several 

 miles beyond. This is explained by the accompanying diagram (fig. 1). 



Dr. Lycett says * " from Cleeve Hill to Birdlip Hill, an extent of 

 about eight miles, would seem to include the limits of the pisolite upon 

 the western face of the Cotteswolds;" and, again, "the ferruginous 

 beds when no longer pisolitic extend southwards in the Cotteswolds 

 in reduced and constantly diminishing importance ; " and he mentions 

 that at Haresfield Hill they consist of " about 12 feet of hard ferru- 

 ginous sandstone in four or five beds having a tendency to a con- 

 cretionary structure at the junction of the beds, and at Procester Hill 

 the hard brown bed which overlies the ammonite bed is the sole 

 representative of the ferruginous Oolite." 



Dr. Wright, in his section at Haresfield, does not aUude to Pea 

 Grit at aU, although he is describing the identical beds which he has 

 called " Pea Grit " at Leckhampton ; and in his description of these 

 beds at Frocester Hill he refers to the shelly and pisolitic seams 

 which traverse them as resembling those in the Pea Grit — a remark 

 which, I think, he would not have made if he believed he was 

 describing beds which he had, in the section of Leckhampton Hill in 

 the same paper, called Pea Gritt. It is, I think, fair to assume that 

 neither Dr. Lycett nor Dr. Wright regarded the oolitic limestone of 

 Frocester and Haresfield Hills as part of the Pea-Grit deposits, and 

 that the existence of these deposits at Haresfield Hill, 20 feet above 

 the hard ferruginous sandstone and separated from it by white oolitic 

 limestone of that thickness, was overlooked by them, neither did the 

 extension of the Pea Grit over the Stroud area, south of Haresfield, 

 appear to have attracted their notice ; on the contrary, Dr. Lycett, 

 in describing the sections of Inferior Oolite at Selsley Hill and Long- 

 fords, near Nailsworth, directs attention to certain bands or seams 

 of marl of which the one in Selsley Hill contained Terebratula 

 plicata, and includes them in the middle or white freestone division 

 of the Fimbria stage, the Pea Grit of Leckhampton constituting the 

 lower division J. Ho was evidently unconscious of the extension of 



* Cotteswold Hills, p. 38. 



t Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xii. pp. 294 ei seq. 



I Cotteswold HiUs, pp. 39 et seq. 



U2 



