GEOLOGICAL NOTES FOR A VISIT TO ROTHLEY CRAG. 28 1 



quite visible equally rolled crystals of red garnet. Sir Walter 

 Trevelyan had collected quite a number of these garnets in 

 the course of years, some from Rothley, but mostly from the 

 Shafthoe Crags in the neighbourhood of the well known 

 " Punch Bowl " there. I have also found many in both 

 places in the seventies. The material of the crag cam.e there- 

 fore from a region where garnetiferous rock and considerable 

 masses of white quartz were exposed to the action of denuda- 

 tion, probably a mica-schist with quartz reefs such as are 

 common in rocks of this kind. Unfortunately there are no 

 such rocks anywhere at all near. One is therefore driven to 

 the conclusion that either the rocks from which the quartz 

 pebbles and the garnets came are now (what is left of them, 

 or in other words their " roots ") covered up by newer deposits — 

 or that the parent mass is in one of the many quartz-and-schist 

 regions at least one hundred miles off in Scotland. I can 

 make no nearer approach at a reasonable guess than this. 

 The great thickening of the group of beds of which the 

 Rothley Crag or Inghoe grit forms part in a limited portion of 

 mid-Northumberland seems to point to some special source of 

 supply comparatively near at hand — such as the mouth of a 

 large and, at times, swift-running river, for example. Perhaps 

 careful examination of the material of the rock, such as the 

 members of the Natural History Society or Field Club should 

 be encouraged to carry out, might bring stronger evidence to 

 bear upon this point. 



Fossils are not to be expected in coarse beds like these, but 

 they are not unknown in the finer-grained and more thinly 

 bedded sandstones which are comprised in the series, and are 

 interpolated between the coarser grits. I have notably found 

 numerous specimens of Streptorhynchus crenistria and other 

 fiattish-valved brachiopods in such beds overlying the coarser 

 beds on the dip-slope both of Rothley Crag and of Inghoe 

 Crag, i.e., of course, to the east. In the same direction one 

 soon comes upon quite a number of small annular spoil heaps 

 dotted over the surface of the ground — about Rothley Shield, 

 &c., for instance ; these are the remains of the ancient pits by 



