PART II. CHAPTER XVII. 



223 



No Fossil Cetacea in Oolite Group. 



Fig. 219. 



Bone of a reptile, formerly supposed to be the ulna of a Cetacean; from the 

 Oolite of Enstone, near Woodstock, 



contrary, such ridges exist for the attachment of muscles ; and 

 to some animal of that class the bone is probably referable. 



Oolite of Yorkshire and Scotland. — North of the Humber, 

 in Yorkshire, the Inferior Oolite assumes a form very different 

 from that which distinguishes it in the south. It may there be 

 called a coal formation, as it contains much vegetable matter, 

 and coal, interstratified with sand and sandstones. The high 

 state of preservation and number of the plants render it probable 

 that land was not far distant. The same may be said of the 

 oolitic coal of Brora, on the south-east coast of Sutherland- 

 shire, in Scotland, where the Inferior Oolite contains coal, one 

 bed of which is 3^ feet in thickness. The plants resemble those 

 in the Yorkshire oolite, and a great number of the associated 

 marine shells and other fossils are the same ;* but the mineral 

 characters of the sandstone, shale, and calcareous grit, differ 

 considerably. 



* Murchison, Geol. Trans., vol. ii. Second Series. 



