1870. ] JUDD—NEOCOMIAN. 333 
reduced and altered form the 200 feet of clay forming the Lower 
Neocomian of Speeton; it may be, however, that they are only to 
be regarded as a subordinate bed of the Tealby Series, in which 
case the Lower Neocomian must have entirely thinned out and dis- 
appeared in the forty miles which intervene between Knapton and 
Worlaby. 
Near Clixby reappear beds from beneath the Chalk which more 
nearly resemble their equivalents in Yorkshire. These are blue 
clays containing large numbers of Pecten cinctus, Ancyloceras, and 
other fossils, but which differ from the Yorkshire Middle Neocomian 
by being interstratified with subordinate beds of yellow sandy lime- 
stone and oolitic ironstones. As we proceed southwards, these 
latter beds become thicker and of greater relative importance, till at 
Tealby, Willingham, and Hainton, the ironstones having gradually dis- 
appeared, the clays become greatly diminished, and the limestones pro- 
portionately increased, the formation assumes, over a small area, an 
essentially calcareous character. As we still procecd southwards, 
however, we find this limestone formation gradually diminishing in 
thickness, and finally disappearing altogether. 
The highest Neocomian beds, and those which reappear last from 
beneath the Lincolnshire Wolds, have assumed the arenaceous cha- 
racter which prevails in them throughout this country. Instead of 
blue clays, they consist of white or brown almost unfossiliferous 
sand and sandstone. These beds are persistent long after the lower 
portions of the series have disappeared, and, stretching southwards, 
pass into Norfolk, where they are known as the “Carstone,” and 
contain at their base, as shown by Mr. Wiltshire*, the characteris- 
tic fossils of the Upper Neocomian. 
Still further southwards occur the thin and anomalous but highly 
interesting fossiliferous deposits of Upware and Potton, which ap- 
pear to form the link between the Neocomian deposits of the north 
and south of England. 
Y. Resurts or A Genrrat Comparison or THE Neocom1aAn Bens or 
NorrHern Evropr. 
Small as is the area occupied by the Neocomian strata now ex- 
posed in the North of England, there is abundant evidence that beds 
of this age were originally deposited to a great thickness over a very 
wide area in Northern Europe. A concurrence, however, of acci- 
dental circumstances (namely, the overlap of the Upper Cretaceous, 
the great spread of diluvial deposits over North-western Europe, and, 
finally, the great breach in the land formed by the North Sea) 
have caused the representatives of the Neocomian to be reduced to 
a few comparatively small and isolated patches. 
Unlike their English equivalents, the continental beds are fre- 
quently much disturbed and even contorted, and the Neocomian 
strata usually form narrow strips along the flanks of hill-chains, 
the wide plains between which are covered with the widely spread 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxv. p. 189 (1869), 
