THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
17 
partizansliip and of teaching us scientific toleration and 
mutual respect. At the present time the several groups of 
students of these old rocks are all met together upon one and 
the same elevated platform of a common opinion, having 
climbed up painfully thereto from many different directions. 
Continental geologists, British amateurs, and the officers of 
the Geological Survey are now at one and the same point. 
They stand together on the shore of a new world of geological 
discovery, full of the richest promise.” 
i have ventured to copy these sentences from the paper in 
th3 “ Geological Magazine” before indicated, because they 
appear to me to describe this almost unique position in the 
history ol geological inquiry in words so far superior to any 
at my command that anything which I might have attempted 
to write could only have seemed like the mutilated echo of 
them. 
(To be continued.) 
THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
BY BEEBY THOMPSON, F.G.S., F.C.S. 
PAKT I. 
(Continued from page 314.) 
The rock-bed has been quarried both right and left of 
the railway, but I need only refer to one section just south of 
the line, and about a mile west of Byfield Station, and this 
only because the transition-bed is fairly well developed there. 
The following fossils were obtained:— 
Ammonites acutus Actceonina Ilminsterensis 
,, Holandrei Cryptcenia consobrina 
,, fonticulus ? (jhemnitzia semitecta ? 
,, spinatus (small specimen). ,, foveolata 
Astarte subtetragona Trochus sp. ? 
,, stnato-sulcata Rhynchonella tetrcihedra 
Plicatula spinosa Terebratula, dc. 
North of Bvfield there is a small quarry on Blackdown 
Farm, about half a mile beyond Iron Cross, towards Hellidon. 
The rock is a ferruginous sandstone about five oi* six feet in 
thickness, and about midway in the section is an irregular 
layer, full of ossicles and broken shells of many kinds; just 
above this layer is a hard bed containing many specimens of 
