/GO E. HILL AND T. G. BONNE Y ON THE 



Within the grounds of Alfred Ellis, Esq., west of the meeting of 

 tho lanes, is a large abandoned quarry, of precisely similar slate. 

 Here a rapid little stream separates two steep and extremely pic- 

 turesque hills, on the northern one of which, called the Brande, 

 stands the house. Mounting the spur of the southern hill, we find 

 the slate greener and coarser in texture, and presently meet a bed 

 of grit, with minute fragments of slate and felspathic rock ; similar 

 beds occur a little further on, then pebble beds, intermingled with 

 schistose ashy slate bands more or less fine, no base being seen. 

 These beds, however, can be studied to the best advantage in the 

 fine sections of the northern hill, where they form a scries of cliffs 

 facing west, now judiciously laid out as a sort of wilderness. In 

 these every detail of the rock can be perfectly studied. It consists 

 of a series of beds of pebbles, interstratified with finer grits and 

 slate. The thickness of the pebble beds is usually about G inches. 

 The compression which produced the cleavage has arranged the 

 pebbles on end in the strata. The pebbles themselves are not gene- 

 rally more than half an inch long, and consist mainly of slate, but 

 with many of a felsitic material, and some quartzose ones, all in a 

 greenish white decidedly ashy matrix. The intermediate slaty 

 bands have also the silvery sheen often belonging to ashy materials. 

 The lowest visible rock, exposed on a wooded spur, is a massive un- 

 stratified ash, with angular fragments and blocks of slate of con- 

 siderable size. Over the pebble beds, well seen above a drive 

 through a cutting about 6 feet deep, is a quartz-grit bed, appa- 

 rently about 8 or 10 feet thick, here and there getting bluish in 

 patches. The quartz seems in places to have been dissolved out of 

 the rock and redeposited on the surface in a glaze ; and we suspect 

 that some at least of it is of secondary formation, coming from the 

 decomposition of felspathic materials. 



In the spinney north of the grounds of the house is an exposure 

 of fine-grained pale greenish slate, not banded. This is probably 

 below the pebble beds, as in the same spinney, close to the lane 

 about the word " Brande" on the map, is another exposure of pebble 

 beds, here a good deal decayed and flaking up with a coarse cleavage, 

 and an ashy sheen, weathering red on the surface of open joints or 

 cleavage-planes. These beds strongly reminded us of those first 

 described at Forest Gate, where the silvery sheen is also apparent, 

 and beds of workable slate also exist above them. The conglo- 

 merates, though their pebbles are smaller, can be identified with 

 those of the Hanging Hocks by the occurrence of the grit beds above ; 

 and both are underlain by thick ashy beds. We may therefore 

 conclude that theso beds of the Brande and the Hanging Hocks are 

 on the same horizon, and with much probability also place there 

 those of Forest Gate. 



South of the lane to Newtown Linford the slates have also been 

 worked in one or two quarries. Mr. W. J. Harrison, F.G.S., tells 

 us that he has found the grit-beds there. This discovery decides a 

 point of which we were doubtful, viz. that the slates of the pit in 

 Swithland Wood lie below the rocks of the Brande. This pit is 



