140 Dr Hibbert on some Remarkable Concretions 



hollow sound that is emitted whenever a traveller rides over 

 the hill, — the sound being responsive to the tramp of his horse's 

 feet. It would, however, have been well if an hypothesis like 

 this had even here stopped short ; but as geology and romance 

 are often united, the theorists of Cheshire, on the principle 

 of nature abhorring a vacuum, have filled this vacant space in 

 the hill of Alderley with valorous knights in armour and the 

 fair objects of their chivalry- Nor have the natural pheno- 

 mena exhibited at Kerridge been less the subject of bold spe- 

 culation. The hill is considered as spell-bound, the indications 

 of which are not only the burnt stone, but certain remarkable 

 concretions found imbedded in the rock, which were first in-, 

 troduced to my notice under the name of witcli-knots. As- 

 suredly the origin of these concretions is as puzzling as most 

 appearances which the geologist encounters. It may be ques- 

 tioned, therefore, whether it is not more prudent to allow the 

 theory which the popular voice of superstition assigns to their 

 causation to remain undisturbed, than to hazard, on this oc- 

 casion, any conjecture of my own, which may perhaps be not 

 a whit the less chimerical. 



The stony concretions, named witch-knots, which are found 

 in the Hill of Kerridge, occur in some abundance, being de- 

 tected when force is applied to the block of stone in which 

 they lie concealed, for the purpose of splitting it up into thin 

 slabs. When a stone has been thus split in the direction of 

 the plane of its fissility into two parts, one slab shows a 

 round hollow in the form of a basin, while the other slab ex- 

 hibits the segment of a solid sphere of sandstone projecting 

 from its surface, and exactly fitting the basin-shaped hollow 

 of the other slab into which it was received when the two 

 fragments were united in situ. (See Plate I., Figs. 29. and 30.) 

 If we could be assured that the fragment in which the basin- 

 shaped hollow is found was in situ always the lowest, the 

 parallel and horizontal lines, which, on a reference to Fig. 30, 

 of the Plate, will be found to encircle the projecting segment 

 of the spheroid body, would be easily enough accounted for ; 

 they would indicate a succession of layers of sandstone, which 

 had filled up the corresponding hollow of the other slab. 



But I could not learn that this relative situation in situ of the 



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