LOWER LIAS: CURRY RIVELL. 75 
Mr. Ussher north of Holmin Clavil, near Feltham, Hayne, and 
on Pickeridge Hill. The stone has been long quarried south of 
Thurlbeer where blue limestones (Tlmrlbeer Stone) and shales have 
been opened up to a depth of 16 feet. Resting on the White 
Lias, here and at Belmont, are t\vo thin layers of limestone, known 
as the " Hat and Cap." (See p. 78.) 
An excellent section of the Lower Lias and Rhaetic Beds was 
exposed in the railway-cutting at Hatch Beauchamp. The beds 
are faulted, and the Lower Lias limestones and clays are bent 
into an anticlinal in one portion of the cutting. Charles Moore 
assigned a thickness of about 60 feet to these beds, but the con- 
fusion into which the higher beds are thrown renders this estimate 
doubtful. From the abundance of Ostrca liussica throughout the 
series, it is evident that the beds belong to the zone of Ammonites 
planorbis. Moore notes this fossil, also O. intusstriata (in the 
bottom-bed), and Monotis (Aricula) dccussata(? = M.fallax) in a 
bed of blue marl, about 10 feet above the White Lias, while 
Pholadomya ambiyua occurred some Av.-iy up, and Pccten pollux at 
the top of the series.* 
Other quarries exposing 20 to 25 feet of the lowest beds of 
the Lias and the White Lias, may be seen near Beer Crocombe, 
Curry Mallet, Fivehead and Curry Rivell. The Lias beds 
exposed in all these quarries, belong to the zone of Ammonites 
planorbis, which includes at its base the Saurian /one of IVlr. 
Moore, and the Ostrea-beds.f Limestones and blue clays were 
observed by Mr. Ussher on Barrington arid Abbey Hills and 
near Curland ; and these beds probably belong to the zone of Am. 
Bticklandi. 
A quarry at Curry Rivell showed the following section : 
FT. IN. 
T . fEven beds of blue limestone and slaty marls 
Lower Lias. Qr ghales . - / - 10 
Z,oneot,im. -j whitish marly limestones and clays with 
P la I Modiola minima and Ostrea liassica - 6 
f~Sun bed, with irregular corrugated surface, 
I in places penetrated by small perfora- 
Rhaetic Beds. <( tions refilled with limestone of similar 
| character - 6 
l_ White Lias limestone, Modiola minima - 10 
The perforations in the Sun bed (first noticed by Messrs. Bristow 
and Etheridge), were probably the burrows of Annelides in the 
soft calcareous mud of the Bhsetic period, and therefore contem- 
poraneous with the sediment now consolidated. J 
The clays of the Lower Lias extend northwards from the neigh- 
bourhood of Chard, over Ashill and Neroche Forests, south of 
Hatch Beauchamp, and thence towards Ilminster, Isle Abbots, and 
c Hambridge, north of Puckington. The beds are covered here and 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxiii. p. 469. 
f See Moore, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xvii. pp. 485, 490. 
J J. H. Blake and H. B. Woodward, Geol. Mag. 1872, p. 196 ; Memoir on the 
Geology of East Somerset, &c. p. 73. See also Vertical Sections, No. 5, Sheet 47, 
by H. W. Bristow & R. Etheridge. 
