OF THE COUNTY OF LEICESTER. & 



II. Igneous or unstratified rocks, having no definite order of occur- 

 rence or superposition. 



1. Basalt 



2. Sienite, or granite 



3. Porphyry. 



Gravel, or Diluvium. 



Over the whole surface of the county, on the tops of the hills up 

 to a certain height, as well as in the valleys, is spread a vast accumu- 

 lation of water-worn materials, with every kind of irregularity as to 

 depth, character, and composition. It is sometimes a blue or red clay, 

 containing pebbles, fossils, and broken pieces of all the rocks of the 

 neighbourhood ; sometimes a coarse sand ; sometimes nothing but a 

 mass of pebbles of all sorts and sizes. The character of the matrix, 

 as it may be called, in which the pebbles are sometimes imbedded, 

 seems frequently to have a relation with that of the substratum on 

 which it rests : thus on the eastern side of the county, where clays and 

 marls constitute the substrata, the diluvium is generally a mass of 

 clay ; while in the neighbourhood of Charnwood Forest, on the coal 

 measures and new red sandstone formation, it consists more fre- 

 quently of sand. The harder and larger materials of which it is com- 

 posed may generally be traced to their parent home either by their 

 mineral character or their organic remains ; they consist of 



1. Rounded masses of hard chalk, and chalk flints. 



2. Pieces of limestone, sandstone and ochraceous nodules from 



the oolites. 



3. A vast abundance of fossils from the lias and pieces of lias 



limestone. 



4. Pebbles of coal, and rarely one of mountain limestone. 



5. Masses of slate or porphyry from Charnwood Forest, and of 



sienite from Mount Sorrel, Grooby, and other places. 



6. Quartz pebbles similar to those derived from the Lickey hill, 



near Birmingham, but some of which may possibly come from 

 Harts-hill near Atherstone, or from some part of Charnwood 

 Forest. 

 The condition of these materials has always a reference to the dis- 

 tance which they have travelled ; thus the pieces from the chalk, none 

 of which now exist within fifty or sixty miles, are always perfectly 

 round and smooth. 



The oolitic pieces, which come from the country immediately east 



