52 LOWER OOLITIC ROCKS OF ENGLAND: 
CHAPTER III. 
INFERIOR OOLITE SERIES. 
LOCAL DETAILS. 
In describing the several members of the Inferior Oolite Series, 
it is desirable to do so geographically, as well as geologically, and 
to arrange the subject-matter as follows : 
1. Dorset, Somerset, and 
the Cotteswolds. 
2. Oxfordshire. 
3. Northamptonshire, Eut- 
landshire, and Lincoln- 
shire. 
1. DORSET, SOMERSET, AND THE COTTESWOLDS. 
T r\ iv o f Inferior Oolite. 
SerieS tMidford Sand. 
The name Midford Sands was given in 1871, by Prof. John 
Phillips, from Midford, a hamlet about three miles south of Bath. 
Here the beds were studied by William Smith, in the picturesque 
cliff which overhung his house at Tucking Mill, where he resided 
in 1798, when superintending the construction of the Somerset- 
shire Coal-canal. He then drove curious tunnels into the sand, 
for dairy and other uses, giving it the name of " Sand of the 
Inferior Oolite."* 
The beds consist of micaceous yellow sands, with bands or 
nodular masses of calcareous sandstone, known in some places as 
" sand-bats " or " sand-burrs." This is the character of the beds 
near Bath, in the Cotteswold Hills, and in the fine cliffs at 
Bridport Harbour. Near Yeovil, and at other places on the 
borders of Somerset and Dorset, the beds are displayed in many 
deep sandy lanes and road-cuttings ; some of the indurated layers 
are made up of comminuted shells, and bands of this nature 
coalesce to form the famous building-stone of Ham Hill. In 
Gloucestershire the upper beds comprise layers of sandy, iron- 
sliot, and fossiliferous limestone, which constitute what has been 
termed the " Cephalopoda Bed." Of this a more particular 
account will be given. 
On the whole, the' formation may be said to consist of the 
sandy sediments and occasional ^hell-banks, that prevailed in the 
south-west of England between the deposition of the Upper Lias 
clay and the Inferior Oolite limestones. 
Where junction-sections may be observed, as in the cliffs of 
Thorncombe Beacon, and in the railway-cuttings near Yeovil, there 
is a gradual passage from the blue clays and shales of the Lias, 
through sandy clays into the yellow sands, with indurated bands. 
These concretionary masses are seen to be bluish-coloured and 
shaly in places, so that there is no definite plane of demarcation 
between the strata ; as indicated long ago by Buokland, Conj - 
* Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames, pp. 108, 109, 118. 
