44 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



We shoold now recommend him to take the train to the station nearest 

 to Sapperton Tunnel, as this will enable him to examine the Fuller's 

 Earth which was cut through during the excavations for the tunnel^ 

 and which may still be seen on the spoil banks adjacent. We have 

 not said much at present about two very important formations which 

 lie between the Bradford clay and the EuUer^s Earth, viz., the Great 

 Oolite and Stonesfield &latey because we propose to dwell more in detail 

 upon them when we describe the district in Gloucestershire where they 

 are most largely developed, and can be studied with most advantage. 

 As the Bradford clay is intimately connected with the Great Oolite, so 

 is the Euller's Earth with the Inferior j the majority of the fossils pre- 

 vailing in the Oolite below, and a few passing upwards into that above,. 

 It is very rarely that the argillaceous band appears in situ, its presence 

 being only indicated (like the upper lias), especially on some of the 

 higher escarpments of the Cotswolds, by the soft, wet nature of the 

 ground, and the bursting out of copious springs. A few fossils, chiefly 

 shells, have been obtained at Cubberly, near Cheltenham ; but Sapper- 

 ton is the richest locality. Its thickness in this district averages from 

 thirty to seventy feet, and the most abundant fossils are Modiola, 

 Ostrea, and Terebratulse. From this point the student should make the 

 best of his way to MiiDchinhampton Common, where the Great Oolite has 

 been long quarried, and from whence some of the finest and most 

 beautiful of its fossils have been obtained. We should advise him by 

 all means to pay a visit to the valuable and instructive collection made 

 by Mr. Lycett at that village, to whom palgeontologists are indebted 

 for the discovery and investigation of many new forms of marine animal 

 life (chiefly mollusks) which inhabited the sea during this portion of 

 the Oolitic period."^^' Abundant and varied as these remains are, it is 

 a remarkable fact that there are no traces of any higher order of 

 animals, either terrestrial, fluviatile, or marine, which would seem to 

 imply that land was far distant, although the sea was probably a shallow 

 one and liable to strong and varying currents. The thickness of the whole 

 of the Great Oolite in the district under review does not exceed 140 feet, 

 the upper portion consisting of several beds of hard limestone and marl, 

 containing the remnants, as it were, of a marine fauna, which abounds 



* The majority of these are described and figured by Messrs. Lycett and Morria^ 

 in the " Memoii-s of the Pal£eontographical Society," Part III., 1850, and Part 

 IV., 1853. 



