108 
NOitTHAMPTON SAND. 
ON THE EELATION OF THE SO-CALLED “ NOETH- 
AMPTON SAND” OF NOETH OXFOEDSHIEE TO 
THE CLYPEUS GEIT. 
Abstract of a'paper read before the Geological Society of London, Feb. 21st. 
BY MR. EDWIN A. WALFORD, F.G.S., OF BANBURY. 
The objects of the paper were said to be two-fold: in the first 
place, to show the existence of some hitherto unrecognised beds of the 
Inferior Oolite in North Oxfordshire, and then to endeavour to define 
their position by comparison with one of the uppermost of the Cottes- 
wold subdivisions, the Clypeus Grit. The area under discussion was 
said to be the border-land between the S.W. or Cotteswold types and 
the N.E. or Northamptonshire types, and was for the most part em¬ 
braced in sheet 45 N.W. of the Geological Survey, in the N.E. 
corner of which is situated the town of Banbury, whilst to the extreme 
S.W. lies Chipping Norton. The author first called attention to 
some remnants of a series of Oolitic limestones at Coombe Hill, near 
Deddington, which he considered to be the equivalent of the Oolite 
Marl. He then pointed out near Bourton-on-the-Water the interven¬ 
tion of some sandy limestones and carbonaceous clays between the 
Clypeus Grit and the Fuller’s Earth ; he thought they might possibly 
represent beds found above the Clypeus Grit near Chipping Norton. 
The beds marked in the map 5' g 7', hitherto termed Northampton 
Sand, he said, were well shown in the new railway cutting at Hook 
Norton, and were capable of being split up into several divisions, the 
two thin base beds containing Ammonites laviusculus and corals: the 
next higher series (C) yielding a large fauna, amongst which were 
Rhynchonella spinosa, Trigonia signata, and Trigonia angulata, and a 
doubtful fragment of Ammonites Parkinsoni. These, with a higher series 
of sandy, marly, and siliceous limestones designated D and E,were 
proved to extend over the high lands to the S.W. It was shown that 
at one end of a ridge called Otley Hill the beds C, with probably some 
remains of a lower series, rested on the Upper Lias, whilst on the 
S.W. flanks of the ridge the Clypeus Grit was to be seen also resting 
upon the Upper Lias. A road section near Over Norton, he said, 
showed beds similar in lithological character to C and D of Hook 
Norton, resting upon the Clypeus Grit, and evidencing a fauna of a some¬ 
what similar character. The author thought that the almost unfossili- 
ferous series E, which had been called the Chipping-Norton Limestone, 
might probably be found to be the equivalent in time of part of the 
Fuller’s Earth, or of some of those beds of the Inferior Bathonian of 
the Cote d’Or described by M. Jules Martin. 
