GooLE Scientific Society. — An excursion was made by this Society 

 on Saturday, July 22nd, to Frodingham, Lincolnshire, under the able 

 guidance of the Rev. W. Fowler, president of the Liversedge Naturalists' 

 Society. Before they commenced their explorations Mr. Fowler gave 

 the party a brief description of the geology of Frodingham and its 

 neighbourhood. The north of Lincolnshire is traversed from north to 

 south by three parallel ranges of hills, with intervening tracts. These 

 ridges, which are well seen in travelling down the Humber to Hull, are 

 each marked by a gently shelving slope to the east, and a steep escarp- 

 ment to the west, and have been produced by the successive outcrops of 

 the harder rocks, lower lias, lower oolite, and chalk having been left 

 projecting, while the softer intervening strata have been worn away by 

 denudation. Frodingham is situated on the eastern slope of the west or 

 liassic range of hills ; the soil is barren or sandy, probably blown sand, 

 resting on a thin bed of peat, beneath which lies the bed of ironstone, 

 some 25 ft. thick, in which the mineral wealth of Frodingham consists . 

 The yield of iron from the one is about 28 per cent. The ease with 

 which the ironstone can be got, and the cheap rate at which it can be 

 smelted, its calcareous nature rendering the addition of limestone as flux 

 unnecessary, fully accounts for the rapid development which the iron 

 industry of Frodingham has undergone. It was until lately supposed 

 that the Frodingham ironstone was of the same geologic date as that of 

 Cleveland, i.e., of marlstone or middle lias age ; it has, however, been 

 clearly proved by the Rev. J. Cross in a paper published in the Journal 

 of the Geological Society, for 1875, that the Frodingham ironstone must 

 be referred to a position considerably lower, viz. , to the zone of the lower 

 lias characterized by Ammonites semicostatus. The party first proceeded 

 to examine some ironstone pits, and afterwards walked to the railway 

 cutting between Frodingham and Althorpe, where a fine section was to 

 be seen of the beds of lower lias clay and limestone, of the zone of 

 Ammo7iites BucMandi underlying the ironstone. They were also con- 

 ducted over the works of the Frodingham Iron Co. by Mr. P. Cliff, the 

 manager. A collection of authentically-named fossils from the ironstone, 

 in the possession of Mr. Clifi", was inspected, and was particularly 

 welcome as affording an opportunity for naming the finds of the day. 

 Fossils were found extremely plentiful, and well preserved in both the 

 ironstone pits and railway cutting ; the species met with in both places 



being nearly the same. The most abundant was the large curved oyster 



Gi-yphoea incurva— so characteristic of the lower lias ; it presented con- 

 siderable variety of form, some specimens from the ironstone beds being 

 as broad as G. dilatata of the clay. The other fossils met with were 



