122, RAMBLES WITH A HAMMER. 
mass of agglomerate, standing like a wall, and full of fragments of all 
sizes, the ruins in all probability of some long-vanished volcanic cone. 
Continuing north-east across the moorland we reach the Hanging Stone, 
an immense block of breccia, poised on a lower mass; this was once a 
logan or rocking-stone. The Oaks Church now lies close to on the 
north; the rocks near it are grey grits and pale slates, (dip south-west.) 
Keeping to the right we cross Blackbrook, and walk south-east for 14 
miles to the cross roads at Bawdon Lodge, and then turn north (to the 
left.) Now we cross the anticlinal line, leaving the grassy outline of 
Charley Knowl on the left ; half-a-mile on, and to the right is Whittle 
Hill, famous for its little quarry in a bed of compact siliceous slate, 
which yields whet-stones of the first quality, known to workmen all over 
England as ‘‘ Charley Forest Hones,” (dip east 35°.) Here we are close 
to Beacon Hill, (south-east,) and can admire its fine outline; its height 
by aneroid is 850 feet. Regaining the Loughborough road, we walk still 
northwards, crossing the ridge, and noticing the grand rhododendrons of 
Longcliff on the left hand ; half-a-mile further on we ascend Nanpantan, 
the little hill on the right, where banded slates are splendidly exposed. 
Walking on to Loughborough, a deserted quarry on the right-hand 
shows a volcanic breccia, in which the imbedded fragments of slate, &c., 
stand out with remarkable clearness from the ashy glistening matrix. 
From this point it is 23 miles to the station. 
The metamorphic rocks of Charnwood, the ashy slates, grits, breccias, 
agglomerates, &c., would seem to have been ejected from a series of low 
cones in the neighbourhood of a tranquil shallow sea, or large 
lakes. Their total thickness is not much under 10,000 feet. They 
much resemble the Borrowdale series of the lake district and so may 
be of Lower Silurian age, but Dr. Hicks has lately found volcanic 
rocks in his pre-Cambrian (Pebidian) beds. As no fossils have yet been 
found, and as the oldest rock in the neighbourhood is the carboniferous 
limestone, which at Gracedieu, on the north end of the forest, is known 
to rest unconformably on the slates, the age of the latter must remain for 
the present an open question. The syenitic masses are plainly intrusive, 
and are therefore of later date. For detailed information the reader 
should consult an admirable paper by Prof. Bonney and the Rey. H. Hill, 
“ Quarterly Journal Geological Society,” Vol. xxxi. p. 754, and Vol. xxxii. 
p. 199, 1877-78, or my book on the ‘“ Geology of Leicestershire and 
Rutland.” 
NOTES ON THE HAWFINCH. 
Tur Hawrincn apout Dersy.—It seems to be the general opinion 
of ornithologists that the Hawfinch has of late years both extended 
its range in this country and become more plentiful; see the 
account of the bird by the late Mr. Henry Doubleday, in the 
‘“‘ Magazine of Zoology and Botany, ” (Vol. I., p. 148,) which is epitomized 
in Yarrell’s ‘‘ British Birds” (4th ed., Vol. II., p. 99 et seg.); and see 
also the remarks of Professor A. Newton, the editor of that edition, 
(Vol. IL., p. 100,) where he says ‘‘Even while compiling the present 
account of it, the editor has received overwhelming proofs, in addition to 
