114 
THE CRETACEOUS ROCKS OF BRITAIN. 
B. Exposures in the Mass of the Lower Chalk. 
In this area it is impossible to indicate the upper limit 
of the zone of Ammonites varians , for fossils are very scarce, 
and there is very little change in the lithological character of the 
chalk till the Belemnite Marl is reached. We shall therefore 
mention the chief exposures in the mass of the Lower Chalk 
below the Belemnite Marl in geographical order east to west. 
There are several old quarries on the slopes of Nordon Hill, north¬ 
west of Melcombe Bingham, but most of them are talused, and only 
two of them are worth noting. One is that already mentioned at 
Melcombe Park Dairy farmstead (see p. 107). 
The same soft chalk overlying the basement bed can be seen 
in a pit in Conygar copse, south-west of Armswell Farm, and 
farther west is a larger pit showing higher beds, consisting of 
blocky whitish chalk. 
A large quarry near Miller’s Farm, east of Buckland Newton, 
cuts through nearly the whole of the Lower Chalk, and must be 
nearly 100 feet deep, but the upper part is difficult to reach. There 
is a band of greyish marl at the top, and the chalk below for 30 
or 40 feet is firm and white. The middle part is talused on the 
west, but the east side shows a clear inaccessible face, and there is 
a dip of about 8° across the pit to the N.N.W. Near the bottom 
is whitish chalk with siliceous concretions or flints, and the top of 
the Greensand comes out from below it, but the junction was not 
clear when the quarry was visited in 1893. 
The representative of the Chalk Marl is exposed again in a pit 
on Dogbury Hill, near Minterne, and here it is much greyer than 
usual, possibly because it is wetter. At the bottom, which is only 
a few feet above the Greensand, are about 4 feet of soft grey, silty 
or mealy chalk, with a few small individuals of Ostrea vesicularis 
and Terebratulci semiglobosa , but no trace of Ammonites. Above 
this is rather hard greyish chalk in lenticular beds, succeeded bv 
greenish-white chalk without fossils. 
Near Hermitage there are two large quarries, one near the east 
end of Remedy Coppice and another below Telegraph Hill. Both 
are 60 to 70 feet deep, but the second is the clearest and shows the 
following beds : — 
Alternating beds of marly chalk and hard whitish chalk. 
Bather hard white chalk in thick beds. 
Firm grey blocky chalk. 
Soft yellowish grey mealy chalk (3 feet seen), with a Taw a elongata and 
indeterminable fragments of an Ammonite.- 
