SECTIONS IN WARWICKSHIRE. 273 



former localit}'. This characteristic Ophiuroid seems to have a wide 

 range, having been found in the Rhsetics in South Wales, Gloucester- 

 shire, Leicestershire, and originally in Germany. It has also been 

 noticed higher up in the White Lias near Rugby. 



Another section, of considerable interest, more recently obtained 

 was at Snitterfield, a village three miles north of Stratford-on-Avon, 

 and about seven miles north-east from Summer Hill. Three 

 rather singular remnants of the Rhaetics were observed, and when I 

 first visited the spot I found the usual black and grey shales with the 

 characteristic fossils exposed on the spoil-bank which had been 

 brought up from excavations made to form a tunnel connected with 

 the water-supply for the town of Stratford. A tunnel was driven, 

 and borings carried down to a considerable depth, the deepest being 

 fifty feet from the surface, in order to form square wells, and in the 

 heading the conduit was constructed to convey the water from the 

 brook to the reservoir at a lower level. The upper shaft nearest to 

 Snitterfield Brook, as seen in the horizontal section before the meeting, 

 was sunk through a considerable thickness of drift, 46 feet consisting of 

 blue clay resting on sand and gravel ; the former runs out and disap- 

 pears at about 200 feet distant from this shaft. In the lower shaft, at 

 King's Lane, nearest the reservoir towards Stratford, the upper blue 

 clay is not so thick, and is succeeded by red marl with a thicker 

 bed of sand and gravel below ; but the total thickness of the drift 

 there is 48 feet 6 inches. The blue clay contains abundant flints, 

 pieces of chalk, and stems of Extracrhius. The gravel is made up 

 of numerous derivative pebbles of quartzite, some probably lower 

 Silurian, as elsewhere in Warwickshire, and various other old 

 unfossiliferous rocks, and among them is a fragment of a large Liassic 

 Ammonite, The gravel is largely quarried near Snitterfield for the 

 roads, and contains numerous Lias and E-hsetic fossils and similar 

 pebbles. In both the shafts the drift lies immediately on the 

 Triassic red marl. A small patch of Rhsetic black shale, nearly 

 horizontal, was met with in the shaft nearest the reservoir overlying 

 the Triassic marls. 



At the shaft at King's Lane another, but smaller remnant of 

 black papery shales occurred resting on green marls. The largest 

 mass of these shales was passed through in the shaft near Snitter- 

 field. The Rhaetics here appear to have been much denuded and 

 irregularly deposited. The entire thickness of these shales has not 

 been ascertained, but probably is not very great for reasons stated. 

 The green marls contain large nodules of gypsum. I was able to 

 determine the presence of the Rhaetics at this spot by finding in the 

 shales the usual characteristic fossils, viz. : — 



Avicula contorta. 



solitaria. 



, var. falcata*. 



Cardium rhgeticura. 

 Scbizodus cloacinus. 



* Not having observed this form anywhere before in the Ehaetics, and 

 thinking it naight be new, I presented some specimens to the South Kensington 

 Museum (Natnral History), and my friend Mr. Etberidgo pronounced it to be 

 new in the British Rhjetic formation. 



