102 LOWER OOLITIC BOOKS OF ENGLAND I 
CHAPTER IV. 
INFERIOR OOLITE SERIES. (LOCAL DETAILS continued.) 
Cotteswold Hills. Bath to Stinchcombe. 
LEAVING the neighbourhood of Bath and passing on to the main 
escarpment of the Cotteswold Hills, we find the Inferior Oolite 
outcropping in a regular belt from Tog Hill near Doynton to the 
neighbourhood of Hawkesbury. In the southern portion of this 
area no good sections have been recorded. 
Further north the beds are exposed here and there in quarries 
and road-cuttings; for instance, west of Dodington Ash, near 
the Cross Hands above Old Sodomy, and near the Manor House, 
Little Sodbury. Along portions of this tract the following 
general subdivisions have been traced : 
FT. IN. 
Inferior f Bagstones - . - - 20 to 30 
Oolite. I Freestone - - - - - 25 to 35 
M' "f rd f Cephalopoda Bed - - 5 to 15 
1 , \ Yellow sands with bands of calcareous 
I Sandstone (Cotteswold Sands) - - 30 to 40 
The stone-beds above the Cephalopoda Bed increase generally 
in thickness northwards, and the beds become more and more 
divided, so that in the neighbourhood of Stroud and Cheltenham 
many subdivisions may be made. These subdivisions are local, 
and the absence of some of them, especially in the Freestone 
division from the southern area, shows that somewhat different 
sedimentary conditions prevailed. 
The Ragstoncs (above-mentioned) are for the most part earthy 
and shelly limestones, and they include the zone of Ammonites 
Parkinsoni and, perhaps, part of that of A. humphriesianus. 
The Freestones comprise false-bedded oolites assigned to the 
zone of A. Murchisonce. 
These beds will be more particularly described further on ; but 
it may be stated generally that Ammonites are by no means so 
abundant in the Inferior Oolite of the Cotteswolds as they are at 
Dundry, and in Dorsetshire. 
In the Gloucestershire Cephalopoda Bed the case is different, 
and over a considerable area we find a very rich fossil-bed which 
yields a profusion of Ammonites and Belemnites. 
Since the beds have betii studied in more detail, they have 
been subdivided into numerous minor zones, and many questions 
have arisen with regard to the correlation of different stages of 
the strata. These questions relate in particular to the beds that 
lie between the Upper Lias clays and the base of the Inferior 
