542 



ME. E. WILSON ON TEIASSIC BEDS AT 



marls and sandstones, including the waterstones at the base. Now 

 there are in Worcestershire several marls and sandstones, including 

 the Waterstones, having at the bottom the hard rock above men- 

 tioned, overling green marls with Estheria, succeeded by a thick 

 stratum of red marls, which evidently come between these and the 

 lower Waterstones at Warwick, Leamington, Cubbington, and else- 

 where, so that the A T ew Red in this district might be fairly divided 

 into Upper and Lower Keuper, with two important beds of sandstone, 

 one above and another below, separated by red marls, which would 

 form hereabouts the dividing line. The same thing applies to the 

 neighbourhood of Bugby, and is, I see, adopted by the local 

 geologists there. The same subdivision is also adopted by the 

 Eev. J. Hello for the Cheshire Trias : and 1 think it might be 

 generally and advantageously adopted where these two sandstones, 

 which differ lithologically, are closely separated by a thick inter- 

 vening mass of red marl. The Waterstones are famous for the 

 number (comprising nine genera) of Salamandroid Batrachians, a 

 large number and variety of which have been found at Warwick, 

 Leamington, and Coventry ; and a unique collection is preserved in 

 the Warwick Museum. 



I may add that although the red rocks of Kenilworth and 

 Coventry have hitherto been assigned to the Permian, there seems 

 every probability that a large proportion of the former will now 

 have to be classed with the Trias. 



Notes on the Triassic Beds at ColwicJc Wood, near Nottingham. 

 By Edw. Wilson, Esq., E.G.S. 



The small fishes described were found by me in the summer of the 

 year 1879, in the roof of a tunnel which was being driven through 

 the side of the hill at Colwick Wood, near Nottingham, for the Leen 

 Valley Outfall Sewer. They come from the Lower Sandstone or 

 4 Waterstones ' of the Upper Keuper, which at this point rest upon 

 the 'Basement-beds' of the Lower Keuper. The fishes were 

 apparently limited to the lowest stratum of the ' Waterstones/ a 

 bed of greenish-yellow sandstone 10 inches thick, with intercalated 

 streaks of red and green marl, and a seam of pebbles at its base, 

 and to the bottom inch or two of that stratum. This bed may be 

 seen cropping out in an adjoining field on the hillside which here 

 forms the escarpment of the Trent Yalley, but it is not fossiliferous 

 at that point ; and although there have been many opportunities 

 of examining the strata at the same horizon on the east side of Not- 

 tingham, and at other places in the vicinity, no traces of any similar 

 organisms have, so far, been discovered elsewhere in the district. 

 In addition to the exceptional interest that is always to be derived 

 from the presence of organic remains in Triassic rocks, as a rule so 

 barren of life, there were two points specially noticeable in con- 

 nexion with the occurrence of these fossils in the Keuper at 

 Nottingham; namely, first, the great number of the fishes, there 

 being quite a shoal of them for a distance of thirty feet or there- 

 about, in the line of section, the individual fishes even lying over 



