GEOLOGY 



ONE of the most striking features in the general geology of England 

 is the fact that the outcrop of the geological formations forms a 

 series of roughly parallel bands crossing the country in a south- 

 west and north-east direction from the Channel to the North Sea. 

 This regular succession of parallel bands is due to the general inclination of 

 the strata to the south-east, but it is interrupted to a certain extent by two 

 great anticlinal movements, one in the north and the other in the south-east, 

 which have brought up lower strata and caused the outcrop of those above to 

 divide into two arms, thus destroying the general symmetry of the arrange- 

 ment. Where the two arms unite the breadth of the outcrop is much 

 increased, and the widest spread of the covering formation occurs. 



The anticline in the south-east is that of the Weald, which ranges in an 

 easterly and westerly direction, and has split the Upper Cretaceous rocks into 

 two arms known as the North and South Downs. These unite to the west 

 in Hampshire and Wiltshire, and form the great spread of Chalk country 

 extending over the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain. 



The second anticline, which is the more important, and the one that 

 affects the district with which we are now concerned, is the great range of the 

 Pennine Hills, which runs from the borders of Scotland to the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the county of Leicester. The main effect of this anticline 

 is to separate the outcrop of the Trias into two branches, one of which 

 extends north across the counties of Nottingham and York, while the other 

 strikes to the north-west through Cheshire and Lancashire. At the bifurca- 

 tion south of the Pennine Range the Trias attains its widest extension and 

 produces the undulating country so characteristic of the Midlands. 



The county of Leicester, situated nearly in the centre of England, 

 includes a large part of the great central plateau formed by the Trias and 

 Lower Lias in this part of the country. The county in fact is nearly equally 

 divided between these two formations, the western half being mainly covered 

 by the Trias with small patches of older rocks protruding here and there, 

 while the Lias occupies with a few exceptions the whole of the eastern half. 

 It consists on the whole of a more or less undulating plain, which is over- 

 spread in places with beds of clay and gravel. In the north-western part of 

 the county this plain is broken by the elevated ground of Charnwood Forest, 

 which rises in a somewhat miniature mountain range to the height of 9 1 2 ft., 

 and forms the culminating point of the district, and the principal elevation in 

 this part of the Midlands. To the west of this the Coal Measures are 

 brought in, at first beneath a thick covering of Trias, but further west on the 

 borders of South Derbyshire they come to the surface. On the eastern side 

 some of the hills rise to a height of 600 ft., and are outliers of the great 

 Oolitic escarpment which extends from the Cotteswold Hills to the H umber. 

 This escarpment just enters the northern portion of the county, and forms the 



