24 A. R. Horivood— Upper Trias of Leicester si clre. 



Sir Roderick Murehisoii. (Jeorge Maw ])aid visits. Professor Hull, 

 in connexion with his survey work, investigated the Coal-field and 

 outlying tracts of Trias, and was much helped by the Rev. W. H. 

 Coleman, of Ashby. Ansted wrote on the district. The Rhfetic 

 rocks have been described by Harrison, Wilson, Browne, and others. 

 The Lower and Upper Keuper have received some attention also. 

 Dealing first with the former, J. Shipraan, in 1882, noticed the 

 occurrence of galena in the Lower Keuper Sandstone near Shepshed, 

 deriving it from the outliers of Carboniferous Limestone to the 

 north-west. More recently the footprint of a Labyrinthodont, dis- 

 covered at Kegworth, was noticed in the Report of the British 

 Association on the Flora and Fauna of the Trias by the writer, 

 a description of which appears hereafter. 



Papers upon the Upper Keuper have been more numerous. In 

 1850 John Plant noticed the outcrop of Upper Keuper Sandstone in 

 the New Parks on the Leicester and Burton line, and gave certain 

 tracks, assignable to Crustacea or Annelids, or possibly plant-remains, 

 the name of Gorgonia keiiperi, which he did not describe, and the 

 name must therefore be regarded as a nomen nudum, and disappear, 

 especially as there is no doubt that the fossils in question have 

 nothing to do with Coelenterata. In 1856 his brother, James Planf, 

 an active local geologist, published a further description of these beds, 

 giving a vertical section (whicli, however, is wrongly given as north 

 and south, instead of west and east), and a detailed section and lists of 

 fossils. Montagu Browne later ( 1 893) criticizes this paper in regard to 

 these details and as to the continuity of the Upper Keuper Sandstone, 

 east of the River Soar. It was followed by similar accounts of the 

 same beds in Warwickshire by the Rev. P. B. Brodie. George Maw 

 was one of the first to notice the fact that the Charnian system is 

 a buried mountain chain which has been covered up by the Red Mail 

 which surrounds it, except where exposed to denudation and excavated. 



The Keuper around Burton- on-Trent and parts of Leicestershire 

 was described in a handbook on that town by W. Molyneux, who 

 made several original observations, noticing the undulations that 

 affect the marls, both red and green, and the existence of Wteir other ium 

 footprints on the Ashby Road and near Brizlincote. J. Plant wrote 

 a paper on the occurrence of pseudomorphs of salt crystals in the Red 

 ^larl, which in the then state of Triassic knowledge was of con- 

 siderable importance. We now know they are of universal occurrence 

 at many horizons. 



Montagu Browne contributed several papers upon the Keuper 

 around Leicester, of wliich that published in 1893 was the most 

 valuable, giving more than a hundred sections with useful remarks 

 upon the Trias in the Borough of Leicester. A very full list of fossils 

 is given at the end of this paper also. The critical remarks show that 

 lie was well acquainted with the Trias in the field. In a later paper 

 upon the geology of tlie Beaumont Leys Estate he ga%'e the details of 

 numerous trial-holes made to ascertain the possibility, or rather the 

 reverse, of findin$r coal on that estate. 



Professor W. W. Watts in 1905 publislied his well-known paper 

 upon the buried landscape of Charnwood Forest, the result of several 



