131 
BATH OOLITE SERIES. 
Brandsby must be referred to the same place in the series as the analo- 
gous beds in Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. Of this I am per- 
fectly assured by personal investigation. At the time of the first publi- 
cation of this Work there was not even a doubt expressed by the 
(geologists who had the best opportunities of knowledge, that the Stones- 
field slate was superior in position to the great oolite of Bath. Mr. 
Smith seems indeed to have possessed data which might have led to a 
contrary conclusion, but it was reserved for Mr. Lonsdale to correct this 
almost universal error, and to prove that these slaty rocks really belong 
to the lower part of the great oolite. There is so great an analogy 
between the slaty rocks of Easton and Collyweston, near Stamford, and 
those of Stonesfield near Oxford, that it is extremely probable they are 
of contemporaneous origin. As however some analogous slaty beds do 
occur above the great oolite of Bath, we must not be too confident on 
this point, until a survey as accurate and laborious as Mr. Lonsdale’s, 
has cleared up the yet obscure relations of the oolites of Lincolnshire and 
Oxfordshire. In the meantime I shall use a suitable caution in the 
application of terms. 
The distribution of the organic remains in the ‘ road-stone,’ or slaty 
rock of Brandsby, Cave oolite, and inferior oolite sand, has yet been care- 
fully ascertained at only a few points ; and the following observations 
will, probably, hereafter receive several corrections. At present, it ap- 
pears to me that the * road-stone’ is characterized by the great abundance 
of crervillia acuta, and crassina minima, and by the presence of pholado- 
o 
mya acuticostata, rostellaria composita, and the genus Action. Where 
this rock is united with the middle oolite, as at White Nab, these fossils 
commonly lie near the top; where it is entirely deficient, (as at Ewe 
Nab,) they are scarcely to be found. The top of the Cave oolite (as 
under Gristhorpe cliffs, at Ewe Nab, Owlston, and Ellerker) is generally 
marked by abundance of millepora straminea, and plates and spines of 
echini, and columnar joints of pentacrinus caput Medusas. In the sub- 
stance of the rock occur belemnites, isocardias, pholadomyae, cucullaeae, 
pern®, pinnae, plagiostomas, pectines, and terebratula. So large a propor- 
tion of its organic contents occurs likewise in the inferior oolite sand 
s 2 
