770 E. HILL AND T. G. BONNE Y ON THE 



Another small patch, marked on the map a little to the south, 

 seemed to bo ordinary banded slates ; but we have not examined it 

 closely. The outcrops between Newtown and Markfield, close to the 

 lane, consist of green slates, highly indurated, very flinty in texture 

 and fracture. 



The gap between the exposures of Newtown and Markfield is less 

 considerable than appears from the map. There is an outcrop of 

 coarse gritty slate in the wood called Cover Clotts. 



At the fork of the highroads north of Markfield is a remarkable 

 ridge of rocks, sometimes called the Altar Stones, marked red on the 

 map, as if igneous. It is really distinctly stratified, the beds 

 all dipping S.W. at about 45°, while the cleavage strikes a little W. 

 of N.W. They are best seen just by the windmill. The section 

 gives banded slates, with rather small and numerous bands at top ; 

 next come two bands of slaty agglomerate, with fragments of slate ; 

 then a bed of fine grit, followed by a much coarser agglomerate 

 with large fragments of slate, some as much as 5 feet long ; and 

 lastly about 30 or 40 feet of fine-grained banded grits, with here 

 and there some traces of false-bedding. 



The matrix of the above agglomerates is a felspathic grit, or mass 

 of minute fragments of rather rounded aspect, dull green mottled 

 with specks pink in colour, such a rock as might result from a 

 mixture of a volcanic mud with triturated fragments of lava and 

 felspar crystals, subsequently much metamorphosed, and now con- 

 taining a good deal of minute epidote. Some of the included frag- 

 ments are a dark fine-grained slate ; but most are the same pinkish 

 slaty rock, resembling a felstone, which occurs in the breccia by 

 Ulverscroft Mill, near Newtown Linford. Here, as there, the over- 

 lying and underlying rocks are fine banded grits ; and some of the 

 specimens from the two places could hardly be distinguished from each 

 other. The matrix of each is of the same general nature ; and much 

 alteration might be expected in a distance of two miles. The strike 

 is certainly for a point much above the Ulverscroft-Mill beds ; but 

 the strike there seemed to be curving in this direction, and the 

 disturbance of the rock at Sandhills Lodge gives countenance to the 

 idea of a fault. We think that with considerable probability we 

 may take these sets of beds to be on the same horizon. 



These great masses of agglomerates die out very rapidly ; a 

 hundred yards S.E. all trace is lost. If, however, we are right in 

 believing the breccia to be of volcanic origin, this is not surprising, 

 and indicates the proximity of a neck. Yet breccias of like nature 

 can be traced along to the extreme south-east of the blue colour on the 

 map, by the 106 milestone, east of the road, there overlying a large 

 thickness of slates. 



The rocks of White Hill are slates, the higher of which show 

 faintly but clearly a W.S.W. dip ; the lower do not indicate bedding, 

 but contain a distinct pebble-bed. The pebbles are very well 

 rounded, about an inch long, of whitish quartz in a white slaty 

 matrix, the line of junction being sharp. Both pebbles and matrix 

 contain small specks of limonitc. On the east side of the road are 

 some slaty rocks, one of which seems to be a bed of slaty breccia. 



