32 LOWER OOLITIC ROCKS OF ENGLAND: 
Smith, and for a long period the following divisions were adopted 
for the south-west of England : 
Inferior Oolite. 
Inferior Oolite Sandf. 
In the course of time, as our knowledge of the fossils increased, 
it was argued by Dr. Thomas Wright, of Cheltenham, that the 
Sands were more intimately connected with the Lias than with the 
Inferior Oolite ; and in 1856 he proposed that the term Upper 
Lias Sands be used,* and this was afterwards adopted by the 
Geological Survey. Wright's conclusions, which were based 
mainly on the range of certain Ammonites, were not however 
generally accepted : they were disputed by Lycett,f C. Moore,! 
J. Buckman, and more recently by E. WitchelLj The general 
tendency of the opposing views was to show that the Sands were 
intimately connected with both Upper Lias and Inferior Oolite, 
a fact indeed which admits of no question. In 1863 Morris and 
Lycett introduced the name Supra-Liassic Sands : a name not 
generally used, and only of late years occasionally employed by 
Mr. Hudleston. The adoption, however, by some geologists of 
the term Upper Lias Sands, and by others of Inferior Oolite 
Sands, has been a source of ambiguity to students, so that when 
in 1871 John Phillips proposed the name Midford Sands 1 !! it was 
accepted as a good stratigraphies! term, whose meaning could be 
clearly understood, and which would satisfy the wants of field- 
geologists. For regarded as passage-beds, it would matter very 
little, with a distinctive name, whether they were bracketed, in 
Tables of Strata, with Inferior Oolite or Upper Lias. This 
name was adopted by the Geological Survey, and was for some 
years unchallenged. 
The term Midford Sand has not, liowever, been suffered to 
remain in this tranquil position ; and since more especial 
attention has been paid to zones, its general application to the 
beds of Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucester has been called in 
question by Mr. S. S. Buckman and Mr. Hudleston. The fact 
is, the sands at Midford are directly overlaid by the upper portion 
of the Inferior Oolite (Zone of Ammonites Parkinson?) ; they have 
yielded but few fossils ; and they have not furnished evidence of 
the presence of all the minor zones that have been identified 
here and there in the Cotteswold Sands and Gloucestershire 
Cephalopoda Bed on the one hand, and in the Yeovil and Bridport 
Sands on the other. 
The fossils, however, which the Midford Sand has yielded, 
show it to belong to the same set of beds as those essentially 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xii. p. 292 ; Lias AuimoiiiteB, pp. 148, 150 
t Cotteswold Hills, pp. 16, 27. 
$ Proc. Somerset Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc., vol. xiii. p. 195. 
Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xiv. p. 102, vol. xxix. p. 504, vol. xxxiii. (Proc.) 
P. 1 ; Proc. Geol. Assoc., vol. ii. p. 249 ; Proc. Somerset Arch. Soc., vol. xx. p. 1 40. 
|| Geol. Stroud, pp. 34-36. 
1 Geol. Oxford, &c., p. 118. 
