BELEMNITES OF THE OXFORD CLAY. 



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BELEMNITES OF THE OXFORD CLAY. 



In passing upward from the thin-bedded rocks of Stonesfield, we find few or no 

 Beleninites for a considerable thickness of the Oolites. Through the whole series of the 

 Great Oolite, Bradford Clay, Forest Marble, and Cornbrash, Belemnites, if ever found, 

 are very rarely seen in the South of England. In the North of England, the doubtful 

 " Grey Limestone," as I termed it, of the Y'^orkshire Coast, contains Belemnites, but they 

 are of the type of Inferior Oolite, and with Ammonites Blagdeni, Am., llumphrej/sianus, 

 and^w/,, Parkinsoni, umst be held to carry that rock to the "Lower Badonian" stage. Is 

 the Great Oolite of the South of England wholly devoid of Belemnites, except in its 

 lowest member, the Stonesfield slate ? I can only reply that no specimen has occurred 

 to my personal observation. Does the Bradford Clay contain any Belemnites? Only 

 one notice is on record, and that is in the now rarely seen volume, published by W. 

 Smith, under the title of ' Strati graphical System of Organized Fossils,' 1817. In that 

 work, page 79, occur these words -. — " Multilocular bivalves. Belemnites small, slender ; 

 Stoford." As my boyish hand wrote the words — the place being familiar to me, I have 

 no reason to doubt the accuracy of the record. The specimen was transferred to the 

 British Museum. No Belenmite is mentioned in the Forest Marble beds, nor, so far as 

 I now remember, has any one been quoted from the Cornbrash, except by error. In the 

 first edition of my work on the 'Geology of the Yorkshire Coast,' 1829, 1 remarked 

 (p. 145) "No Belemnites have been found in the Cornbrash of Yorkshire;" and again 

 (p. 14G), "The Cornbrash is the only conchiferous stratum in the eastern parts of 

 Yorkshire from which Belemnites are excluded." In consequence of some notice reaching 

 me of a specimen found in the Cornbrash of \''orkshire between 1829 and 1835, I 

 modified the expression in the Second Edition, so as to call attention to the extreme rarity 

 of the occurrence. If any Palaeontologist wliom these remarks may reach should find 

 himself able to furnish me with specimens of Belemnites from beds between the Corn- 

 brash and Stonesfield slate, of any part of England, he would oblige me much by a sight 

 of them. 



There being then, as appears, this great blank in regard to Belemnites (the remark is 

 almost equally good for Ammonites, but in this case we must exclude the Cornbrash), 

 through a considerable range of conchiferous strata, it becomes a matter of great interest 

 to compare the several Oxonian forms which now appear, with the numerous Badonian 

 species which have disappeared. Are these the same species matured in some other 

 part of the sea, modified there through a long succession of transmitted forms, and again 

 brought into the Oolitiferous ocean ? We may consider this question after the facts 

 have been collected and studied. 



Among the Belemnites of the Oxford Clay and the Kelloway Rock (a sandy member 



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