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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
The Geology of South Bedfordshire is now being exhibited more fully than hitherto, as the extension of the Midland Railway from Bedford to London is opening up a series of sections in the newer Seconday rocks which characterise this part of the county. The following notes were chiefly taken during a walk made last summer along the line, between the towns of Bedford and St. Alban's (Herts). For the first few miles the excavations are slight, and exhibit only the Drift sands and gravels of the rich valley of the Ouse, though these are well worthy of careful examination for flint implements and mammalian remains, which have been discovered on the north side of the river, at Biddenham, by J. Wyatt, Esq. About three miles from Bedford is an excavation in the Oxford clay; the upper portion is dark brown merging into dark blue beneath, and it abounds in fossil wood in various stages of carbonization, the colour of which ranges from brown to jet black; it is so abundant in places that some of the excavators fancied they were coming upon a coal-mine.
page 155 note 1 See Rev. Brodie's, P. B. paper “On the Phosphatic Nodules in the Lower Greensand at Sandy, Bedfordshire.”—Geol. Mag. Vol. III., 1866, p. 153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See also MrWalker's, J. F. paper “On a Phosphatic Deposit in the Lower Greensand of Bedfordshire,” in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. 3rd series, vol. 18, 11, 1866.—Edit.Google Scholar
page 155 note 2 Or Boulder-clay?—Edit.
page 155 note 3 Totternhoe stone is not a local representive of the chalk-marl.
page 155 note 4 It is the top bed of chalk-marl through Bucks. and Berkshire; there is eighty feet of chalk-marl below it. See MrWhitaker's, paper thereon, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xxi. p. 398. (1865).—Edit.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 156 note 1 When the Lower Chalk is full of water it presents the appearance described here by the author, of a “bed of dark clay;” the Lower Chalk is always rich in iron pyrites.—Edit.
page 156 note 2 A. varians is remarkably abundant in the Totternhoe stone of this part.—Edit.
page 158 note 1 See MrPaper, Whitaker's, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. xvii. p. 166.Google Scholar