OF THE COUNTY OF LEICESTER. 



11 



Ticknal stand. The others are five small isolated hills, which run in 

 a directly straight line, a little west of north, from Grace Dieu Ab- 

 bey, namely, Grace Dieu, Osgathorpe, Barrow Hill, Cloud Hill, and 

 Breedon Hill, the extremes of this line being rather more than four 

 miles apart. The first-mentioned district is about two miles long 

 from north west to south east, and rather more than half a mile 

 broad. It is a low saddle-shaped mass, the northern side of which 

 dips fifteen degrees to the north east at Ticknall, and is overlaid by 

 level beds of red marl ; and the southern may be seen, near the 

 first pool in Calke Park, to dip south west, at an angle of about 

 twenty degrees, and thus buries itself beneath the Ashby coal field, 

 of the northern part of which it no doubt forms the floor.* One of 

 the quarries at Ticknall exhibited the following section : — 



FEET. 



1. Level beds of red and variegated marl 15 



2. Beds of dolomitic limestone 5 



3. Shale, with beds of limestone 20 



4. Hard blue limestone 10 



Nos. 2, 3, and 4 are full of mountain limestone fossils, and dip 

 fifteen degrees north east, while No. 1 is perfectly horizontal. At 

 Dimminsdale, a little south of Calke, the limestone lies nearly level, 

 the quarries being just about the crown of the arch. It consists here 

 of some alternations of shale and gritstone resting upon limestone, of 

 which about forty feet were exposed. Parts of the limestone are 

 dolomitic, or magnesian, and contain bunches of galena, or lead ore, 

 which in one place is worked in what is technically called a pipe vein 

 — that is, a circular excavation following the run of the ore. The 

 eastern bank of the little valley of Dimminsdale apparently consists 

 of shale to the thickness of a hundred feet, and on the top of it are 

 some old quarries in a sandstone which probably represents the mill- 

 stone grit, and of which some traces may also be seen on the south 

 side of the first pool in Calke Park. As soon as you have ascended 

 this bank, however, you find yourself on the level beds of the new 

 red sandstone again. 



The five small hills before mentioned as belonging to the mountain 

 limestone formation, have all a westerly dip, the angle varying from 

 twenty degrees, which is that of Grace Dieu, at the southern extre- 

 mity of the line, to seventy degrees, which in some places is that of 

 Breedon at the northern extremity. The limestone of Breedon and 



• Sec section No. 2. 



