1 64 Revieivs — Ansted's Geography and Geology of Leicester. 



have said before that there is little else in the book that can be 

 looked upon as original, and therefore we are anxious to test the 

 value of this claim. Now on p. 8 of Mr. Coleman's pamphlet, we 

 find the following : — " The general character of the rock, in this 

 quarter, is such as to convey, irresistibly, the impression that it is 

 nothing else but the clay slate itself, heated to the melting point, 

 and then crystallized by cooling. ... It would seem that a 

 series of beds of clay, more or less pure, resembling the binds and 

 pot-clays of the Coal-measures, were first consolidated into slates, and 

 then subjected, in situ, to intense heat under pressure." Again, in 

 the catalogue of Eock Specimens, Prof. Ramsay says (p. 19 and 21), 

 " Between Grace Dieu Wood and Charley Wood, there is a tract of 

 country. . . . some part of which seems, in ordinary terms, to be 

 igneous ; . . . other parts show every degree of gradation, from 

 a common, unaltered, slaty character, to rocks that seem to be, in 

 hand specimens, igneous ; but, on a large scale on the ground, shew 

 traces of stratification, and other signs, proving them to be of sedi- 

 mentary origin, but so much altered that they have been partly, and, 

 in some cases, entirely fused, and thus pass into so-called igneous 

 rocks of the deep-seated kind. . . . The following specimens 

 are arranged so as to show something like a passage from green- 

 stones, and porphyritic greenstones, into syenites. These are well 

 crystallized, and are, in ordinary terms, intrusive igneous rocks ; 

 but from the foregoing remarks it may be surmised that they also 

 are probably only stratified rocks, which have been so thoroughly 

 melted that all traces of original structure has disappeared." 



These extracts speak for themselves. Prof. Ansted may not have 

 seen the latter, but he has made so large a use of Mr. Coleman's 

 pamphlet, that we should have scarcely supposed him unacquainted 

 with the former. Though this does not look well, we might, per- 

 haps, be disposed to make excuses for the author, if he had made 

 good use of his own materials, and those which seem to have come 

 from previously published sources. But he cannot be said to have 

 done even this much. In proof take his section No. 4. It looks like the 

 faint general sketch, which a cautious observer offers, of a country 

 hastily, and for the first time, crossed, and no one would for a 

 moment imagine that it ran through a largely worked coal-field. 

 We are indeed told that the " dips are not indicated with any ap- 

 proach to correctness," but this rather superfluous statement is not a 

 sufficient excuse, in a country where the dip and lie of the beds are 

 perfectly well-known. Had the author taken the trouble to consult 

 Section No. 2, Sheet 52, of the Horizontal Sections of the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain, the dips might have been inserted with 

 that amount of correctness which is derived from a study of actual 

 workings; and he cannot plead ignorance of this section, for it is, w© 

 cannot quite say copied, but "conveyed," in an inferior style of 

 drawing, in Section No. 3 of his work. We may also notice, that 

 Nos. 8, 9, 10, of Prof. Ansted's sections, are closely adapted, with- 

 out acknowledgment, from the woodcuts on pp. 35, 45, 64, of Mr. 

 Hull's memoir. 



