INFERIOR OOLITE SERIES: SHERBORNE. 75 
which further on at Ham Hill is marked by the celebrated 
building-stones of that locality. The stone there is for the most 
part a shelly limestone, and the palaeontological as well as the 
stratigraphical evidence, agree in grouping it as the upper part of 
the Midford Sand, at the base of the Inferior Oolite. 
Symptoms of false-bedding are shown here and there in the 
irregular disposition of the hard bands, for these occasionally 
meet and enclose wedge-shaped masses of sand. 
In the deep road-cuttings on Babylon Hill a thickness of 40 
feet or more of these beds was exposed. From one of the shelly 
bands Mr. J. Rhodes and myself obtained Ammonites striatulus ? 
Cucullcea, Pecten Iceviradiatus, Ostrea, Trigonia, and Rhynchonella., 
The lower portions of the Sand exhibit bluish tinges and 
become shaly as they merge downwards into the Upper Lias 
shales. These features are exhibited in the lane leading from 
Yeovil Junction to Yeovil-town Station, and in some of the 
railway-cuttings near Yeovil, as observed also by Mr. S. S. 
Buckman. He records Ammonites Moorei from the hard bands 
throughout the Sand ; A. jurensis also occurs. He would assign 
a thickness of about 30 feet to the zone of A. opalinus* 
The total thickness of the Midford Sand in this region may be 
estimated at from 180 to 200 feet. 
The Inferior Oolite of the neighbourhood of Sherborne is of 
especial interest on account of the rich fossil-beds that occur in it. 
The confusion that for a long time existed with regard to the 
correlation of its divisions, has been cleared up by the labours of 
Mr. S. S. Buckman, followed by those of Mr. Hudleston. They 
have shown the desirability of collecting from each individual bed 
of the Inferior Oolite ; for in the earlier works of Dr. Wright 
considerable confusion was introduced, both in this neighbourhood 
and in that of Bridport (as previously mentioned, p. 57), by the 
correlation of the Gloucestershire Cephalopoda-Bed with portions 
of the Dorsetshire Inferior Oolite, that belong to higher stages in 
the series. Even Prof. Buckman, for long a resident at Bradford 
Abbas, at one time spoke of the Ammonites of the zones of 
A. Parkinsoni, A. humphriesianus, A. Murchisonce, and A. jurensis , 
as being " inextricably mixed in about three feet of rock " in his 
own quarry.f Such a view might be taken from the collection 
made at Stoford(p. 74). Attention however to the fossils of each 
layer reveals evidence of the general succession of the leading 
forms ; and Prof. Buckman himself, later on, recognized the fact 
that different species of Ammonites locally prevail in different 
quarries around Sherborne.J His son Mr. S. S. Buckman 
subsequently pointed out that the " fossil-beds " in the several 
quarries occur on different geological horizons, although un- 
fortunately their fossiliferous development is local, and all the 
* Inf. Oolite Ammonites, p. 6 ; Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxvii. p. 588. 
f Proc. Somerset Arch. Soc., vol. xx. p. 140. 
j Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxiii. p. 8. 
Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxxvii. pp. 588, &c. ; see also Hudleston, Inf. Ool. 
Gasteropoda, p. 28. 
