PRECARBONIFEROUS ROCKS OF CHARNWOOD FOREST. 213 



West of this, across nearly a mile of much obscured country, appa- 

 rently slaty rock and Trias, is the Stanton-Field syenite, a patch on 

 the Geological Map covering three or four square furlongs. But at 

 the present time boulders scattered in the soil are the only evidence 

 of its existence, so that we can give no particulars concerning 

 this outcrop. These massifs then, if they are not connected, lie on 

 a rude L-shaped area. Forming another hill, almost due north of 

 Markfield, and about 1J mile from it, we have another massif, that 

 of HammerclifF, on the edge of the Triassic valley. 



'The Northern Syenites. — Still further north, and nearly a mile away, 

 is the interesting patch at Bawdon Castle. This, in the Geological 

 Map, is coloured red as " syenite," all that which remains to the north 

 being tinted crimson as "greenstone." As will be seen below, its 

 relation to both these rocks is of much interest. The remaining 

 "greenstones" form a series of rather narrow patches, four in 

 number (two of which are apparently isolated in the slate), extend- 

 ing for about 1| mile in a north-west direction, and commencing 

 about a mile to the north of the Bawdon-Castle exposure. One 

 more patch there is, that of Great Buck Hill, about a mile east of 

 the lower end of the above. As it will be seen that all these rocks 

 are closely related, and that they are at least 2J miles away from 

 the nearest point of the Quorndon district, it will be convenient to 

 complete the description of them before proceeding further. 



(2) Details of the Southern Syenite. — The Southern Syenite is 

 largely worked near Groby. The old pit lies south of the main 

 road leading through the village, and is an excavation of great size. 

 The syenite has all the appearance of a deep-seated igneous rock ; 

 it is traversed by bold joints, .the faces of which often exhibit 

 slickensides, especially along one plane, dipping at about 30°. The 

 normal rock is rather coarsely crystalline, showing to the eye dark 

 green hornblende with pink and greenish felspar, the latter being 

 of rather dull aspect. Specks and nests of bright yellow-green 

 epidote are not unfrequent, with occasional grains of pyrite. The 

 joint-faces have commonly a brown ferruginous coating, and some- 

 times one of epidote. There is also found a much more finely crys- 

 talline variety of syenite. In this the red colour predominates, the 

 green being chiefly confined to the hornblende, which either occurs 

 in dark specks throughout the mass, as in one variety, or collected 

 in fair-sized patches. Crystals of plagioclase felspar seem to be more 

 common in this than in the other variety. We were told that the 

 change from the one rock to the other was often rather rapid, and 

 that neither seemed to be restricted to any particular part of the pit. 

 There are in this pit two or three dykes of intrusive greenstone, 

 which will be described hereafter. A cutting passing under the 

 high road, and giving an excellent section of the Keuper sloping 

 gently away from the above mass of syenite with a deposition dip, 

 leads into another large pit in the mass east of Groby Pool. The 

 rock here is so similar to that in the last pit, both varieties occurring, 

 that no further description need be given. We have not seen any 

 dykes here. In a disused quarry near is a quartz vein, which can 



