Aug., 18S9. 
THE BATH OOLITE. 
187 
THE BATH OOLITE AND METHOD OF 
QUAKEYING IT* 
BY ALFRED BROWETT. 
At the recent meeting of the British Association at Bath, 
joining the excursion to Box and Corsliam Down Quarries, 
one of the largest workings where the celebrated Bath Stone 
is obtained, and seeing how largely this stone enters into the 
building of our houses, it occurred to me that some brief 
account of when and how it was formed and how it is now got 
would not be uninteresting to the members of the Geological 
Section. 
It is probably known to all of you that the freestone beds 
supplying this stone constitute the Great or Bath Oolite of 
the Lower Oolite Series of the Jurassic System. The rocks 
of the Jurassic group appear to be always of marine origin, 
and to have been formed at a time when sea waves rolled 
over the Middle and South of England. They were formed 
long subsequent to the coal formation, but still so long ago 
that not only have vast changes since taken place on our 
earth’s surface, but the types of both plants and animals have 
many times changed, and not a single species then existing is 
now to be found. 
Oolite is a granular limestone, and the grains of which it 
is composed are egg-shaped, and in mass resemble the eggs or 
roe of a fish ; hence the name, from the Greek &6v an egg and 
Xt0os a stone. When these eggs or grains are very distinct, 
it is called Roestone, and when they are large and pea-like, 
it is called Pisolite or Peastone. These little grains consist of 
carbonate of lime arranged in successive concentric layers, 
like the coats of an onion, round some minute particle of 
foreign matter which forms a nucleus, it may be of sand or a 
minute fragment of coral or any such substance. Some 
Oolites consist only of these spheroidal grains, and are 
compacted by pressure; in others the interstices are filled up 
by fine-grained calcareous mud ; others are cemented by an 
infiltration of crystalline calcite. 
The quarries whence the stone is obtained might be more 
correctly termed mines, the workings being entirely under¬ 
ground, forming tunnels several miles in length, branching 
* Iiead before the Geological Section of the Birmingham Natural 
History Society, on Tuesday, November ‘20th, 1888. 
