GEOLOGY OF EAST NOTTINGHAM. 31 



its more rounded contour, and by its finely laminated character and bright 

 red colour, as contrasted with the purplish and dull red of the highest 

 beds of the Lower Keuper. 



We come now to the most interesting feature of all that may be said 

 to be new in the geology of this part of Nottingham. Running along the 

 boundaz'y line separating the Lower Keuper from the Bunter (f2) on the 

 new map you will observe a narrow band coloured blue. That is the 

 conglomerate forming the lowest bed of the Keitper in this district. It 

 was seen at short intervals along the boundary all round the double 

 tongue of Bunter in the St. Ann's Valley ; and, although tolerably 

 persistent, it is sometimes represented by a mere string of pebbles. The 

 tracing of this conglomerate along the base of the Hunger Hills and 

 round the opposite side of the valley to where it was cut off by No. 2 

 fault in Dame Agnes Street fairly did away with the theory of the 

 curved fault ; for, according to the Survey map, this valley ought to have 

 been in Lower Keuper. The best exposures of this conglomerate were in 

 Turner Street and on Hunger Hill Road, the section in Turner Street 

 having the advantage of showing a perpendicular section, while on the 

 Hunger Hill Road it had to be studied dm'ing the process of excavating. 

 In Turner Street its greatest thickness was 22iu., and it there consisted 

 of rounded and partially rounded pebbles of all sizes up to boulders five 

 or six inches long, consisting for the most part of quartz and quartzite, 

 with a few bits of brown magnesian limestone, volcanic ash, basalt, 

 greenstone, chert, slaty rock, and Coal Measure rock, the whole being 

 firmly compacted together by lime and magnesia and oxide of iron, the 

 latter giving it a strongly ferruginous aspect. Such is its compactness, 

 indeed, that nawaes who happen to have to excavate it have learnt to 

 dread it, and aiiirm it to be the toughest rock they ever met with. It 

 rested in the shallow cavities of an eroded sixrfaoe of the Bunter, sloping 

 to the east at an angle of about 5", and was surmounted by first 

 about 18in. of coarse mottled sandstone, then beds of finely-laminated 

 brown and light olive-green sandstone, with thin partings of red 

 marl. At its outcrop on the top of the low rounded hill of Bunter 

 on Hunger Hill Road, the conglomerate, which, with its associated 

 beds, formed a band at the surface about 50ft. broad, had much the 

 same composition as in Turner Street, only there was more chert and a 

 good deal of white limestone in lumps and ground-up, there being also 

 calcite in minute crystals, and as a thick coating to some of the pebbles ; 

 it was about eight inches thick, and covered by first a thin bed of 

 gi-eenish grit, cemented into cakes by calcareous matter, then by an 

 irregular series of beds about three feet thick, consisting chiefly of 

 unconsolidated white (bleached) sand, false-bedded, and streaked with 

 pale green and yellow, with occasional strings of pebbles enclosing 

 lenticular beds of sand, of a ferruginous colour. The whole, though veiy 

 irregularly bedded, had a general inclination to the noi'th-east, passing 

 under the Keuper. When a pei-pendicular section of these beds was 

 exposed further under the Keuper, they presented a peculiar variegated 

 wavy appearance, being streaked with red, yellow, and pale green. I was 

 struck by the remarkable resemblance between these beds and the raised 

 beaches I had seen on the sea shore, the only difference that I could 

 perceive being the complete absence of any traces of hfe. Among the 

 pebbles forming the conglomerate at this spot, I found what appears to 

 have once formed the extremity of a sea-worn pinnacle of greenish fine- 

 grained (Silurian ?) sandstone, such as may be seen at the present day 

 along coasts where Silurian or Cambrian rocks are exposed. That this 

 was its origin seems to me to be indicated by its peculiar water-worn 

 aspect, and by the lateral grooves along the lines of stratification. 



A very instructive section has lately been exposed in Ford Street, 



