Mention is made by Mr. Hull, F.G.S., in the second edition of his useful work on the coal-fields of England, of a deep sinking for coal on the estate of the Arley Pottery and Fire-brick Company, situated at Shatterford, five miles north of Bewdley. This work, though unfortunately ending in failure, and leading to the abandonment of the enterprise, deserves a prominent ppsition in the annals of coalmining, chiefly because the section obtained may be regarded as an index to nearly the whole of the coal measures of the forest of Wyre. Through the courtesy of Mr. John M. Fellows, manager of works to the late company, I am enabled to place on record the particulars of the shaft-sinking. To illustrate it, I have sketched the geological construction of the district for three miles in a line north-west to south-east, adding a section due north and south of the near-lying anticline of Trimpley, where the upper tilestones crop out. While the work of sinking was in progress, I obtained daily intelligence either through visits or by communications from Mr. Fellows, to whose obliging conduct in giving me every facility for scientific investigation I am greatly indebted.

The specimens obtained from each bed were particularly examined by me, and the fire-clays, which, from their number formed an important part of the series, were of a highly interesting character. The fossils obtained do not require special notice, no new fern being met with, and the Sigillariæ, &c, being few in number and badly preserved. These in every case lay prostrated in the strata, and appeared to have been drifted.

As the geographical distribution of fossils is always an interesting subject, it has occurred to me that a few words on the Oolitic fossils of this part of England, not much visited by geologists, may be acceptable to, at least, some of the readers of the “Geologist.” It will not be my intention in this paper to treat so much of the geological features of the country, as to give complete lists of the organic remains which have been found by myself and a few others in the various strata of this district. The Oolites of North Bucks and Northampton, though of course presenting, for the most part, the usual character of the system as represented in other Oolitic districts of England (being, as they doubtless are, merely a continuation of those of Oxfordshire, &c.), yet possess several points of interest peculiar to themselves. The identity of the “Northampton Sands” (formerly classed with the Lias) with the Stonesfield Slate of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, and constituting the Lower Zone of the Great Oolite, the importance of these “sands” as an iron ore; the occurrence of land-plants similar to the Stonesfield specimens in the Forest-marble of the neighbourhood of Wolverton; the extensive development of the Kimmeridge Clay at Hartwell; and of the Great Oolite further north;—all these facts combine to invest these beds with much interest, both to the geologist and the palæontologist.