Border Countri/ of Salop and North Wales ; Sgc. 263 



of rock under a shed belonging to " the Nevvdigate Arms." The mass from 

 which these branches appear to proceed, is about 12 yards thick. It is coarse- 

 grained and perfectly crystalline, but exceedingly tough. Veins of crystallized 

 quartz are found in its vertical rents. Besides its base of hornblende and fel- 

 spar, it contains, in small disseminated portions, iron pyrites, calcareous spar, 

 mica, and a soft olive-green substance, which seems to be serpentine *, 



Another bed, in which an extensive quarry has long been worked, is at 

 Marston, where the grauwacke formation terminates. This bed is more than 

 10 yards thick, and dips east 1 foot in 3. It exhibits veins passing through it 

 in planes nearly vertical, and containing carbonate of lime with siliceous cry- 

 stals from the smallest size to that of 5 inches in length. These crystals are 

 of the usual form, and envelop portions of the calcareous spar. 



6. The last detached groups of the rocks, usually denominated Transition, 

 are those of Leicestershire. As the vicinity of Charnwood Forest has been 

 described, I shall confine myself to a district of much smaller extent, separated 

 by an interval of 8 or 9 miles only from the spot which we have just left. 

 This district lies a few miles east from Hinckley, on the right of the high road 

 from that town to Leicester, and in the parishes of Shilton, Croft, Stony 

 Stanton, and Sapcot. All this region consists of a coarse-grained crystalline 

 greenstone, rising in rocky eminences, between which are situated level 

 plains of alluvium, watered by brooks and sometimes inundated by floods. 

 Such a plain extends from below the village of Stony Stanton to Croft. At 

 this place the stream is discharged between two precipices of greenstone of 

 such elevation, that, if they had not been disjoined, the whole plain above 

 them would have been a lake. The villages of Stony Stanton and Sapcot are 

 on one ridge of rock. But by far the most considerable eminence, and that 

 which presents the most evident characters of a trap formation, is Croft Hill, 

 which runs for nearly half a mile in a direction from N.W. to S. E. The 

 rock is here sometimes porphyritic ; and its felspar has a red tinge, which on 

 exposed surfaces is so much increased as to produce, when seen from a little 

 distance, the lively red colour of many syenitic rocks. It has a structure of 

 separation by parallel planes nearly vertical ; and by other horizontal planes 

 it is divided into great rhomboidal masses, but without a columnar arrange- 

 ment. It contains in general no veins of any kind. I only found one excep- 

 tion in a quarry at its eastern extremity, where it is intersected by veins con- 



* A similar greenstone is described in Geol. Trans, vol. iv. p. 21, as occurring in the Coley 

 Hill dyke, Northumberland. 



VOL. II. — SECOND SERIES. 2 M 



