The formation which represents the Lower Oolite, and which in England attains an average thickness of from 500 to 600 feet, forms a very complex system of stratification, which includes the two formations, Bajocien and Bathonian, adopted by M. D’Orbigny and his followers. The lowest beds of the Inferior Oolite occur in Normandy, in the Lower Alps (Basses-Alpes), in the neighbourhoods of Lyons and Neuchatel. They are remarkable near Bayeux for the variety and beauty of their fossils: the rocks are composed principally of limestones—yellowish-brown, or red, charged with hydrated oxide of iron, often oolitic, and reposing on calcareous sands. These deposits are surmounted by alternate layers of clay and marl, blue or yellow—the well-known Fuller’s Earth, which is so called from its use in the manufacture of woollen fabrics to extract the grease from the wool. The second series of the Lower Oolite, which attains a thickness of from 150 to 200 feet on the coast of Normandy, and is well developed in the neighbourhood of Caen and in the Jura, has been divided, in Britain, into four formations, in an ascending scale:—
1. The Great or Bath Oolite, which consists principally of a very characteristic, fine-grained, white, soft, and well-developed oolitic limestone, at Bath, and also at Caen in Normandy. At the base of the Great Oolite the Stonesfield beds occur, in which were found the bones of the marsupial Mammals, to which we have already alluded; and along with them bones of Reptiles, principally Pterodactyles, together with some finely-preserved fossil plants, fruits, and insects.
2. Bradford Clay, which is a bluish marl, containing many fine Encrinites (commonly called stone-lilies), but which had only a local existence, appearing to be almost entirely confined to this formation. “In this case, however,” says Lyell, “it appears that the solid upper surface of the ‘Great Oolite’ had supported, for a time, a thick submarine forest of these beautiful Zoophytes, until the clear and still water was invaded with a current charged with mud, which threw down the stone-lilies, and broke most of their stems short off near the point of attachment. The stumps still remain in their original position.”[65] See Fig. 1, [Plate XIX.], p. 261. (Bradford, or Pear, Encrinite.)
3. Forest Marble, which consists of an argillaceous shelly limestone, abounding in marine fossils, and sandy and quartzose marls, is quarried in the forest of Wichwood, in Wiltshire, and in the counties of Dorset, Wilts, and Somerset.
4. The Cornbrash (wheat-lands) consists of beds of rubbly cream-coloured limestone, which forms a soil particularly favourable to the cultivation of cereals; hence its name.[66]
The Lower Oolite ranges across the greater part of England, but “attains its maximum development near Cheltenham, where it can be subdivided, at least, into three parts. Passing north, the two lower divisions, each more or less characterised by its own fossils, disappear, and the Ragstone north-east of Cheltenham lies directly upon the Lias; apparently as conformably as if it formed its true and immediate successor, while at Dundry the equivalents of the upper freestones and ragstones (the lower beds being absent) lie directly on the exceedingly thin sands, which there overlie the Lower Lias. In Dorsetshire, on the coast, the series is again perfect, though thin. Near Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, the Inferior Oolite disappears altogether, and the Great Oolite, having first overlapped the Fullers’ Earth, passes across the Inferior Oolite, and in its turn seems to lie on the Upper Lias with a regularity as perfect as if no formation in the neighbourhood came between them. In Yorkshire the changed type of the Inferior Oolite, the prevalence of sands, land-plants, and beds of coal, occur in such a manner as to leave no doubt of the presence of terrestrial surfaces on which the plants grew, and all these phenomena lead to the conclusion that various and considerable oscillations of level took place in the British area during the deposition of the strata, both of the Inferior Oolite and of the formations which immediately succeed it.”[67]
Fig. 118.—Meandrina Dædalæa.
a, entire figure, reduced; b, portion, natural size.
(Recent Coral.)
The Inferior Oolite here alluded to is a thin bed of calcareous freestone, resting on, and sometimes replaced by yellow sand, which constitutes the passage-beds from the Liassic series. The Fullers’ Earth clay lies between the limestones of the Inferior and Great Oolite, at the base of which last lies the Stonesfield slate—a slightly oolitic, shelly limestone, or flaggy and fissile sandstone, some six feet thick, rich in organic remains, and ranging through Oxfordshire towards the north-east, into Northamptonshire and Yorkshire. At Colley Weston, in Northamptonshire, fossils of Pecopteris polypodioides are found. In the Great Oolite formation, near Bath, are many corals, among which the Eunomia radiata is very conspicuous. The fossil is not unlike the existing brain-coral of the tropical seas ([Fig. 118]). The work of this coral seems to have been suddenly stopped by “an invasion,” says Lyell, “of argillaceous matter, which probably put a sudden stop to the growth of Bradford Encrinites, and led to their preservation in marine strata.”[68] The Cornbrash is, in general, a cream-coloured limestone, about forty feet thick, in the south-west of England, and occupying a considerable area in Dorsetshire and North Wilts, as at Cricklade, Malmesbury, and Chippenham, in the latter county. Terebratula obovata is its characteristic shell, and Nucleolites clunicularis, Lima gibbosa, and Avicula echinata occur constantly in great numbers. Wherever it occurs the Cornbrash affords a rich and fertile soil, well adapted for the growth of wheat, while the Forest Marble, as a soil, is generally poor. The Cornbrash passes downwards into the Forest Marble, and sometimes, as at Bradford, near Bath, is replaced by clay. This clay, called the Bradford clay, is almost wholly confined to the county of Wilts. Terebratula decussata is one of the most characteristic fossils, but the most common is the Apiocrinites or pear-shaped encrinite, whose remains in this clay are so perfectly preserved that the most minute articulations are often found in their natural positions. [Plate XIX.], p. 261 (Fig. 1), represents an adult attached by a solid base to the rocky bottom on which it grew, whilst the smaller individuals show the Encrinite in its young state—one with arms expanded, the other with them closed. Ripple-marked slabs of fissile Forest Marble are used as a roofing-slate, and may be traced over a broad band of country in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, separated from each other by thin seams of clay, in which the undulating ridges of the sand are preserved, and even the footmarks of small Crustaceans are still visible.