PRECARB0N1FER0TTS ROCKS OF CHARNWOOD FOREST. 761 



80 yards deep, and is actively worked. The slate is purple, blue, 

 and sometimes greenish, showing faint bands in its upper part. 

 Some vertical sheets of rock in the pit closely resemble intrusive 

 dykes. They are, however, affected by the cleavage ; and the seeming 

 junctions follow cleavage-planes. They are probably duo to decom- 

 position extending from the sides of fissures which have passed down 

 planes of cleavage. Outside the wood, and underlying the rocks of 

 the quarry, is a knoll in a field showing a series of banded gritty 

 slates. Other small knolls show similar rocks. 



By the back carriage-drive to Hoecliff Hall is a thick gritty bed. 

 A fine set of banded slates is exposed in the outcrops north of the 

 cross lanes, but the colours are rather less marked than in the 

 Woodhouse region. Those of Ling Hill and Crow Hill are of the 

 usual character. The dips in all this part of the Forest are E.N.E. 

 or E. by N. ; the due east direction of the arrows on the Survey 

 map is misleading. 



In the hollow lane at the Brande a tiny fault of about a foot 

 throw can be seen. It is quite possible that there are others about, 

 of much larger dimensions, which cannot be determined. 



The last district on the east of the anticlinal is a series of rocks 

 in two spinneys, just outside Bradgate Park — the northern one called 

 Blore's Hill, the southern unnamed on the map. The beds in the 

 southern spinney are a very beautiful set of banded slates of the 

 ordinary type and strike. Those of Blore's Hill are inter- 

 esting, from showing, as we go northward and westward, a gradual 

 curving of the strikes from E.N.E. or E. to S.E. 'Now the dips 

 beyond the anticlinal in this part of the Porest are S. The ma- 

 terials are mainly banded slates, green, of moderately fine grain, 

 and at the north end considerably indurated. The most important 

 bed is that which is coloured red and marked F on the map. This 

 is a large thick unstratified bed of breccia. It has a green ashy 

 matrix containing many small fragments of felspar crystals and 

 larger pieces of felsitic rock and of a fine-grained green slate. Here 

 and there are dark shining fibrous spots, probabl} T the result of the 

 decomposition of some magnesian mineral. The larger fragments, of 

 fine-grained green slate — and many are of enormous size — are con- 

 torted in fantastic ways. One included piece is full six feet long, 

 bent back on itself into the shape of a IT. This bed is identical in 

 all respects with the breccia on Old-John Hill, only a quarter of a 

 mile off, towards which indeed the strike (if the same as that of the 

 neighbouring beds) would carry it; this, however, is beyond the 

 anticlinal, and dips S. instead of towards the east as here. 



Before commencing the description of the Bradgate rocks, we must 

 mention that the exposure in the Park nearest to the Hoi gate 

 entrance also dips E.N.E. and contains a conglomerate of slaty pebbles 

 with felspathic fragments. It does not look exactly like the pebble 

 beds of the Brande, but, being 1| mile distant, might nevertheless 

 belong to them. The strike would carry it below ; but being so close 

 to the anticlinal (for within 100 yards are beds dipping south) and 

 in a region which is faulted, as we shall show, not much stress can 

 be laid on this. 



