14 



No section is exposed, and the fragments of limestone lie 

 about the fields as at Copt Heath, only more numerous. The 

 bed was, however, on one occasion exposed by draining, 

 when numerous large blocks of crystalline limestone from 

 six inches to a foot thick were dug up near the surface. The 

 lower associated strata, viz., the ' fiiestones,' ' guinea bed,' 

 and intervening clays, which rarely exceed altogether eleven 

 feet in thickness, were formerly worked In the district and 

 contain the usual, though not many fossils. The Rhoetics 

 here have yielded Pecten valoniensis, Cardium Rhceticum 

 and another species, Avicula contorta, Modiola minima, 

 Placunopsis alpina, Axinus, Pullastra arenicola, Pleuro- 

 phorus elongatus, &c., and Estheria minuta, some blocks of 

 a hard blue limestone being almost made up of Cardium 

 Rhceticum. No sections are visible; but the Pecten-valoni- 

 ensis bed, black shales, and limestones were ti-aceable in a 

 sloping field below the lowest beds of Lias, where a wood 

 had been cleared and the ground ploughed up. 



In the early part of the year 1874, Mr, Harrison 

 (Curator of the Town Museum), discovered the Rhoetics 

 at the Spinney hills near Leicester, and from them he 

 has obtained numerous characteristic fossils, viz: Avicula 

 contorta, Pecten valoniensis, Cardium Rhceticum, Axinus, 

 (casts,) numerous Reptilian bones, some of which Mr. Miall 

 of Leeds, considers to be Plesiosaurian, as far as their 

 imperfect condition allows them to be determined ; others 

 which Mr. Davis, of the British Museum, believes to 

 belong to a large species of Labyrinthodont, and if this is 

 correct, it would extend the limit of this genus further 

 upwards in time into the Rhoetics ; for hitherto it has been 

 supposed to have become extinct at the close of the Triassic 



