486 W. W. Watts — Ancient Rocks of Chunncood Fared. 



anticline, but even here the details are very much complicated, and 

 it is not possible to trace some of the beds for any considerable 

 distance, although the general succession seems quite clear. As 

 Messrs. Bonney and Hill pointed out, the two agglomerates form 

 a most useful index and one which can be traced for a great part of 

 the way round the Forest. The same may be said of the Beacon 

 Hill beds and of the Brand Series. 



The bulk of the rocks are made of volcanic ingredients, even the 

 fine hornstones and slates being made of volcanic dust often 

 interleaved with tuffs and breccias. When the lower part of the 

 Maplewell Series is traced round to the north-west it becomes 

 coarser, and eventually passes into a mass of very coarse 

 agglomerates, in which the succession is not easy to unravel, 

 while it is much confused by faulting and the intrusion of igneous 

 rocks ; possibly also by the outflow of lava. 



Bardon Hill presents exceptional difficulties. While the chief 

 rocks are like those of Grace Dieu, Cademan, and Whitwick, it lies 

 altogether out of the line of these rocks and must owe its position to 

 faulting. The agglomerates are also associated with a mass of 

 porphyroid like that which occurs in a normal position at Peldar 

 Tor and High Sharpley. At Bardon this rock appears to be 

 intrusive into the agglomerates, and a similar explanation may have 

 to be adopted for Sharpley, Peldar, and Ratchet. Many difficulties 

 would still have to be met. not the least of which is the occurrence 

 of boulders of Peldar rock in some of the agglomerates. A possible 

 explanation of this is found at High Sharpley, where porphyroid, 

 which is now acknowledged to be either an intrusion or a lava, is 

 nodular in structure ; it has been subsequently sheared so as to put 

 on the aspect of an agglomerate. 



The porphyroids would appear to have been the first rock intruded 

 before much movement had taken place in the rocks ; they are 

 sheared, cleaved, and crushed along the north-west and south-east 

 lines. 



Syenite was next intruded, generally along the main movement 

 planes such as faults and the junction of the Brand Series with the 

 Maplewell Series. It has been somewhat crushed by the movement, 

 and its main divisional planes agree with the cleavage and faulting 

 directions in the country. 



A still later intrusion appears to be the Mount Sorrel Granite, 

 which does not penetrate into the Forest proper, while it is in contact 

 with rocks whose relation to the rest of the Forest has not been 

 ascertained with certainty. It is the only igneous rock which effects 

 any considerable amount of metamorphism in the clastic rocks with 

 which it is in contact. 



As to the age of the rocks, we have little to guide us. They are 

 unlikely to be later than Cambrian; they are not at all like the 

 fossiliferous Cambrian rocks of Nuneaton, they do not contain 

 Cambrian fossils, nor do the Nuneaton diorites penetrate them. On 

 the other hand, the movement by which they were affected came 

 from the direction S.W. to N.E., whilst Lower Silurian and Cambrian 



