Shales-with-‘beef’ was the name given to some 70 feet of Lias on the Dorset coast, lying above (53) Table Ledge and below (76 a) the Birchi-Tabular. The beds consist of paper-shales, marls, indurated bands, and limestone nodule-beds, with numerous, more or less impersistent, interbedded seams of fibrous calcite, called ‘Beef’ by the Officers of the Geological Survey. Descending to the beach at Charmouth, and there forming reefs on the foreshore, the Shales-with-Beef are the most accessible Lias of that place. Yet they are, perhaps, the least known of all the beds. This is doubtless because of the generally unsatisfactory condition of the fossils found in them, and their consequent worthlessness on the one hand to the native, who finds no sale for such fragmentary and friable remains as the fossils present; while, on the other hand, the geologist seldom finds specimens more than approximately identifiable, and generally obtains completely satisfactory examples from but three or four horizons. Sir Henry De la Beche described the Lias of this coast nearly a century ago; and, although he generally under-estimated their thickness, the subdivisions that he then made can be approximately correlated as follows, at any rate those five which lie above the Blue Lias limestones:— (5) Irregular bed of Limestone, with nodular concretions, frequently containing ammonites; 2 feet=Stellaris beds (87–89). (4) Slaty marls, with several thin beds of indurated marl; 67 feet = Black Marl series above Birchi-Tabular and below Stellaris beds (77–88). (3) Slaty marls containing small crystals of selenite; 32 feet Shales-with-Beef (54–76).