Outline of the Geology of the Neighbourhood of Cheltenham - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 Excerpt: ...Cotteswold Hills, recently presented to the Geological Society by Messrs. Brodie and Buckman, reasons have been advanced for considering the Stonesfield Slate itself as only the extension of the Great Oolite beds; being deposited at the same time and by the same sea that left the remains which forms the Great Oolite of the southern end of the Cotteswold chain; and the diversity of the contents of the two ends of this formation is readily accounted for, if we consider that the Stonesfield Slate originated under mixed conditions, somewhat similar to the Insect Limestone--as explained by the Rev. P. B. Brodie--that in fact land was in near proximity, and the terrestrial animals and plants were carried down by rivers into an estuary, or large arm of the sea. This estuary gradually became shallower, whilst the deep parts of the same sea still continued to deposit the thicker beds of the Great Oolite formation; hence we see that the Great Oolite beds, which are of great thickness at Bath, thin out to not more than twenty feet at the Cheltenham end of the Cotteswolds, whilst the converse of this occurs with respect to the Inferior Oolite, which, though a thick deposit at Cheltenham, is remarkably thin at Bath. The mixed remains, previously mentioned, as occurring in the fissile marl of the Upper Lias, may probably owe their origin to causes somewhat similar, as the bed presents a great similarity of structure to the Insect Limestone of the Lower I/ias; and from its thinness, we should expect that it was deposited under different circumstances from the rest of the formation, which change was of a comparatively short duration. IX.-DISLOCATIONS, DETRITUS, &c. As the accumulations before described have undergone great alterations in external form, since the period...