330 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIDTY. [Feb. 23, 
ciently rich to repay the working, is a rock almost entirely made up of 
small and beautifully polished oolitic grains of hydrated peroxide of 
iron. The earthy material, full of larger concretionary masses of 
ironstone, which was at first thought to be equally valuable, is found 
to yield so small an average percentage of iron that it is not worked. 
The oolitic ironstone rock is crowded with fossils, the shells of the 
gigantic Pecten cinctus being especially abundant; it also frequently 
exhibits veins of beautifully crystallized calespar. The ore is thus 
an eminently calcareous one; it yields on analysis from 28 to 33 per 
cent. of metallic iron ; in many places it appears to have undergone 
a certain amount of dehydratation, and exhibits irregular patches 
of dull reddish tints. The great value of this ore consists in its 
adaptability for smelting in admixture with the argillaceous ores of 
the coal-measures; and the whole of the rock at present raised is 
sent to Leeds for that purpose. 
The useful bed of ironstone averages 6 feet 6 inches in thickness ; 
it is mined by means of adits driven into the face of the hill: the 
working of this ironstone, however, is rendered less profitable, owing 
to the want of a good roof to the seam, and the consequent necessity 
for heavy timbering. The adits at the present time (December 
1869) have extended for some 200 yards into the hill, and at the 
furthest point an upcast shaft, about 90 feet deep, has been put 
down. The ore is carried on a private railway, about 13 mile long, 
to the Holton-le-Moor station on the Manchester, Sheffield, and 
Lincolnshire Railway. For a considerable time past the ironstone 
has been raised and sent away at the rate of about 100 tons per day. 
The ironstone beds are known to extend as far northwards as 
Hundon, where they are of considerable thickness; and a thin seam 
of the same rock has been found as far southward as Tealby. 
The similarity in every respect of this ore with that which has 
been worked for many years at Steinlahde and Osterholz, near Salz- 
gitter, and at some other points in Northern Germany is very 
striking. The German beds, which are among the various strata 
of somewhat different ages classed together by M. Fr. Ad. Romer 
as Hilsconglomerat, are, like the English strata, more or less com- 
pletely made up of minute, polished, spherical, oolitic grains of hy- 
drated peroxide of iron. The English and the German ironstones 
are, both as rock-specimens and in polished sections under the mi- 
croscope, quite undistinguishable in their characters. The fossils 
also in the two cases are almost identical, and the extraordinary 
abundance and great size of the specimens of Pecten cinctus are in 
both alike remarkable. While, however, the English beds are almost 
horizontal, the German strata are greatly inclined (at Steinlahde at 
an angle of 63°), and can therefore be worked by means of great open 
pits. Similar oolitic ironstones to those of Lincolnshire and North 
Germany occur in the Neocomian of France and Switzerland*. 
* The oolitic iron-ores mentioned by Dr. Fitton as occurring in the Lower 
Greensand of the Isle of Wight (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. iii. pp. 202, 308) 
are very different from those we have been describing, consisting of grains of 
