6 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



Our intentions being, besides collecting fossils, to trace, if possible, 

 some positive connection, or otherwise, between these reputed Upper 

 Cretaceous Sponge-gravels and the acknowledged Lower Greenland 

 deposits of Furze Hill and Badbury Hill. 



Taking up our quarters at Farringdon, we first visited the Sponge- 

 gravel pit near the Windmill public-house at Little Coxwell, where 

 we found a splendid section of the gravel exposed (see section 4), and 

 in a few hours had collected a good supply of fossils ; — dip of beds E. 

 by N. 10°, resting, in part at least, upon Kimmeridge clay. Next 

 day we went to Furze Hill, and found near the top of the hill the 

 ironstone concretions described by Mr. Godwin-Austen (Quar. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, vol. vi. p. 456), containing numerous fossils, all of them, 

 I believe, of Lower Greensand age. These concretions, for the most 

 part, lie scattered about on or near the surface. In one place, how- 

 ever, we found a small section exposed, where the concretions oc- 

 curred in position, imbedded in light-coloured sand. About fifteen 

 feet lower down the hill, we found the same light-coloured sand, 

 alternating with clay in thin layers, without concretions, and appa- 

 rently unfossiliferous. 



In returning towards Farringdon by a pathway across some fields, 

 and when about a mile east of Little Coxwell. we came to a gravel- 

 pit of large size, the gravel of which struck us at once as being un- 

 like that of the- "Windmill pit, the colour being very much darker, 

 and the composition of the beds somewhat different. And here we 

 presently observed an interesting fact, which seems to have hitherto 

 escaped notice, viz. that this dark-coloured gravel (which, from its 

 appearance, I shall call " red-gravel") rests unconformable upon the 

 light-coloured " Sponge-gravel " of the Windmill pit. — the Sponge- 

 gravel, as before observed, dipping E. by N., the lied-gravel W. by S. 

 at a slight angle, the line between the two beds being sharply de- 

 fined. The section exposed in the deepest part of the pit gave a 

 thickness of about twenty feet to the lied-gravel, with the addition 

 of six feet of Sponge-gravel (visible) beneath (see section 3). The 

 composition of the Red-gravel we found to differ from that of the 

 Sponge-gravel, in the scarcity of Sponges and the greater comparative 

 abundance of Bryozoa. 



As this pit (which, for distinction, I shall call East pit) is scarcely 

 half a mile distant from the Windmill pit, both of them being on 

 much the same level, — occupying, in fact, opposite sides of a flattened 

 ridge of ground which extends from Furze Hill towards Farringdon, 

 — a cross section between the two pits must be somewhat as is shown 

 in the section, PL i. Fig. 1: — 



Our next excursion was to Badbury Hill. In a small pit near 

 the roadside, on the west slope of the hill, and at about fifty feet from 

 the top, we found a section exposed, which was to me by far the 

 most interesting one I had yet seen. This section was as follows : — 



-j- Light-coloured ami ferruginous sand, with slahs and fragments of 



chert, apparently the debris of higher beds 44 feet. 



