INFERIOR OOLITE. 
349 
Fig. 34T. 
Portion of a fossil fruit of Podo- 
carya Bucklandi, Ung., magni¬ 
fied. (Buckland’s Bridgw. Trea¬ 
tise, PI. 63.) Inferior Oolite, 
Charmouth, Dorset. 
Fig. 348. 
Cone of fossil Araucaria sphcerocarpa^ 
Carr. Inferior Oolite. Bruton, Somer¬ 
setshire. One-third diameter of origi¬ 
nal. In the collection of the British 
Museum. 
occurs; but it is wanting in the north of England. It 
abounds in the small oyster represented in 
Fig. 349. The number of mollusca known 
in this deposit is about seventy; namely, fifty 
Lamellibranchiate Bivalves, ten Brachiopods, 
three Gasteropods, and seven or eight Ceph- 
alopods. 
Inferior Oolite. —This formation consists of ^p7ne%Tarlh^’ 
a calcareous freestone, usually of small thick¬ 
ness, but attaining in some places, as in the typical area of 
Cheltenham and the Western Cotswolds, a thickness of 250 
feet. It sometimes rests upon yellow sands, formerly classed 
as the sands of the Inferior Oolite, but now regarded as a 
member of the Upper Lias. These sands repose upon the 
Upper Lias clays in the south and west of England. The 
Gollyweston slate, formerly classed with the Great Oolite, 
and supposed to represent in Northamptonshire the Stones- 
field slate, is now found to belong to the Inferior Oolite, both 
by community of species and position in the series. The Col- 
lyweston beds, on the whole, assume a much more marine 
character than the Stonesfield slate. Nevertheless, one of 
the fossil plants Aroides Carr., remarkable, like the 
Pandanaceous species before mentioned (Fig. 347) as a rep¬ 
resentative of the monocotyledonous class, is common to the 
Stonesfield beds in Oxfordshire. 
The Inferior Oolite of Yorkshire consists largely of shales 
and sandstones, which assume much the aspect of a true 
