On some Sections in the Oolitic District of Lincolnshire

Abstract

The following observations relate to a series of Sections exposed during the progress of the cuttings of the Great Northern Railway in Lincolnshire, and which are considered to be of sufficient interest to be laid before the Society, inasmuch as they afford some novel points connected with the Oolitic series, and also some interesting phaenomena relating to the Drift. As many of the sections are now covered up, and as they occurred in a district where good and deep sections are comparatively rare, a brief record of their general character will be useful to those whose future investigation may lead them to examine the local phaenomena more in detail. The line of country traversed by the railway between Grantham and Peterborough being occupied by a portion of the lower oolites (which are here diminished in breadth), exposes the following members of the oolitic series, some of which have not been previously noticed as occurring in that district, in ascending order:—Lias, Inferior Oolite, Great Oolite, a series of shales, sands, and clays (the equivalent of the Upper Sandstone and Shale of Yorkshire), Cornbrash, Kelloway Rock, and Oxford Clay. Covering some portions of these, and in considerable thickness, is a great mass of the northern drift, besides which are thick accumulations of gravel and remains of a fluviatile deposit. The beds referable to the Drift period which it is intended to describe in the first part of this paper, viz. the superficial detritus occurring in irregular patches on the oolite, the boulder-clay