PRECA.RBONIFEROTTS ROCKS OF CHARNWOOD FOREST. 763 



6. In the country west of the anticlinal line, on which we now 

 enter, is a good deal of igneous rock, which considerably complicates 

 its structure. The relation, however, of the igneous to the stratified 

 rocks we purpose to defer to the last section, and so shall, as far as 

 possible, pass it by for the present. 



Almost the whole of the S.W. portion of Bradgate Park is syenite ; 

 but there is one isolated patch of stratified rock, correctly indicated 

 as such on the map. This is shown in the little quarry opposite the 

 Ruins and across the brook, which, from a range of stable-buildings 

 pulled down some twenty years ago, is usually called the Stable 

 Quarry. It is a very puzzling place. The following appears to be 

 the most probable explanation. A bed of slate interstratified with 

 grit has been bent into a series of small parallel folds of unequal 

 height ; and the harder grit has in places caught and as it were 

 •*' nipped " the softer slate in the folding. The general strike of the 

 slate is a few degrees S. of W. ; and the folds rise roughly towards 

 the W.N.W. The grit is very hard, with occasional small quartz 

 veins, and some indications of bedding and of a faint cleavage. It 

 consists chiefly of quartz grains with some minute granules of a 

 nearly black mineral. It is remarkably like the quartz grit which we 

 find at Swithland overlying the series of the pebble beds. The slate 

 is a pinkish grey felsitic rock with ill-defined dull-green chloritoid 

 spots, the sort of rock that we might expect to result from the re- 

 arrangement of a fine ash or the denudation of a not very acid 

 lava. 



There are two good lines of exposure in the park, that along 

 Holgate Hill (fig. 2) and that up the south spur of Old John. They 

 have the same general character, as will be seen from the following 

 description : — 



Starting from the north wall of the enclosure of the Ruins (within 

 which all is syenite), and ascending the slopes of Holgate Hill, we 

 soon come to exposures of banded slates. One of these, a sort of 

 cliff, at a distance of about 200 yards, gives a good section of in- 

 durated banded slate. (There is a small patch of syenite close to 

 this to which we shall recur in the last part of this paper.) Pro- 

 ceeding obliquely across the line of strike, we pass over or near 

 frequent exposures ; so that, though the rock cannot be seen con- 

 tinuously, there are but few points not in the line of strike of some 

 visible outcrop. These for a considerable distance are all banded 

 slates — indeed, until the crest of the hill is reached, a steep rise of 

 about 30 feet. Sometimes the bands are rather coarse-grained. 



Keeping in the same direction, aeross the strike, over the plateau 

 at the top of the hill, we continue on banded slates for some 100 

 yards, when we find a slate passing into a bed of coarse greenish 

 mottled ash. Banded beds succeed ; and about 50 yards further a 

 mottled ash recurs, here containing fragments of fine-grained slate. 

 Alternations of banded slates and mottled ashes follow, until after 

 about 120 yards comes the lowest rock seen, a large mass of un- 

 stratified greenish mottled ash with vast contorted fragments of fine- 

 grained green slate, precisely equivalent to the great agglomeratic 



