198 RICHARDSON : THE LOWER OOLITIC ROCKS OF YORKSHIRE. 
With local variations the three divisions of the Scarborough 
Beds can be traced along the Hambleton Hills to the greatly- 
faulted tract in the neighbourhood of Cox wold. 
When sections become available again to the south-east, 
the beds are seen to have undergone a change. Instead of the 
three clearh^- marked divisions of shale, sandstone or grit, and 
limestone, there are only two. The lower (c) comprises beds of 
hard blue fossiliferous limestone, which at Brandsby have long 
been worked for road-metal under the name of Brandsby 
Roadstone," and sometimes are sufficiently fissile to afford slabs 
thin enough for roofing purposes. 
The upper division {a and b) comprises at Thirkleby Barf, 
near Coxwold, " soft massive sandstones with casts of fossils 
[? division h], which become more flaggy in the upper part [? divi- 
sion a] but in the Howardian Hills this upper division is " a 
brown porous grit, very full of casts of Avicula hraamtmiriensis " 
and with the lower totals some 40 feet in thickness. 
In Cram Beck and in Stonecliffe Wood, that is, in the neigh- 
bourhood of the Derwent V alley where it traverses the escarpment 
of the Lower Oolites, the two divisions are very similarly developed 
to ^\•hat they are in the Howardian Hills, only in the upper 
sandy division in the immediate neighbourhood of Cram Beck 
are often found great burrs or doggers crowded with fossils, and in 
StonecUffe Wood, several bands of fossiliferous limestone fuU of 
specimens of Pseudomonoiis , Gervillia, Pleuromya, Astarte, etc. 
" About Burythorpe where these beds should come out again," 
wites Fox-Strangways, "there is not a trace of any fossiliferous 
rock at this horizon " (p. 249). Thus here, as is the case also 
where they first appear on the coast at Gristhorpe, the Scar- 
borough Beds are very thin. 
The date of the Scarborough Beds may now be considered. 
As pointed out by Mr. S. S. Buckman in Appendix I., there 
is ample evidence for deciding that a portion is of hlagdeni hemera. 
Another portion may be of sauzei date ; but it is obvious that a 
great deal more careful collecting from the beds in situ will have 
to be accomplished before an}- thing more definite can be said. 
As far as the facts that have been obtained mil permit I 
have endeavoured to indicate the changes that take place in the 
I See note on p. 197. 
