23 
KELLOWAYS STONE. 
Soil.™ Colour, yellowish brown. 
Consistence, over the stone dry sandy loam, above and below approaching* to clay ; 
kneadable clay loam intermediate. 
Subsoil, yellower than the soil, sandy with rubbly stone ; where wet, and the stone deficient, 
kneadable, or very sticky and tenacious. 
Excavations, rare, shallow, hold water; in some places a clay covering to the stone, 
abounding with Selenite. 
Hollow-wavs, in roads across the course of this Stratum but little sunk beneath the surface of 
the adjoining lands, seem to indicate its site. 
Stratum, brown rubbly stone, with sandy exterior ; irregular lumps, bluer and harder within, 
composed chiefly of organized Fossils ; used only on the roads. 
In most parts the surface and soil of this stratum differs but little from that of the clay 
courses on each side, and that little distinction is still further partially obscured by the soil of 
the calcareous alluvium which is common to the clay vale district. 
This extraordinary stone, which neither from its thickness or consistence can properly be 
called a rock, should be considered like the two preceding rocks and sands, only as one of the 
divisions in the great clay district before described ; there being beneath this stone another 
stratum of clay, which is the boundary of the great stony district called the Stonebrash Hills. 
The course of the Kelloways Stone is known only by the few excavations in it, chiefly for 
road materials, which in a country abounding so much with clay are very scarce. It no where 
forms any characteristic surface, or rarely a hill or other feature which is distinguishable to 
any but those who know where to look for the Stratum. 
Several small commons in North Wilts, rather sandy and springy, seem to be of the soil 
formed by the outcrop of this Stratum, whose course is but partially defined. 
Good bricks are made of earth dug near the course of this stone and its sand. 
Selenite is very abundant in the clay above it : bituminous wood, and a brown aluminous 
earth below it. There is great reason to believe, that the mineral waters of the lower part 
of the clay vale series are from this stone, or some contiguous part of the clay above or below it. 
Rarely as this stone appears by outcrop, the recent excavation for coal at Bruham proved 
it to be perfect in the deep, and there to contain the lobate Oyster, or Gryphus, (b in the 
British Museum,) and the other organized Fossils by which it is most distinctly characterised. 
The excavations of the Kennet and Avon, and Wilts and Berks Canals, exposed new 
outcrops of this stone, which I afterwards found on the Thames and Severn Canal, near South 
Cerney. 
From the great obscurity in the course of the Kelloways Stone, the organized Fossils of the 
Stratum can only be found in excavations, and in the stone used on the roads. Some of the 
larger Ammonites polished, exhibit the same beautiful arrangement of colours as the septa of 
the large Septaria, which in Dorsetshire are cut and polished for slabs and chimney-pieces. 
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