G FOSSILIFEROUS HiEMATITE NODULES IN LEICESTERSHIRE. 
then, fossils may be met with showing beautifully delicate 
structure or nervation of the leaves, scales, &c., of ferns, 
trees, and allied plants. A reference to Plate I., Figs. 10, 
14, and 15, will probably render unnecessary any further 
description of these organisms. Fig. 11 shows a shell. 
Stria .—Certain parts of the surfaces of some of the 
stones in question are marked by polishing, by scratches, 
dimplings. and by deep grooves or worn-away depressions 
running across or partly round the nodule. The plough and 
harrow have in many instances produced certain of these, but 
that ice has been instrumental in forming the greater 
number of them is, by some geologists, thought to be 
probable. Sir A. 0. Ramsay, some thirty years since, 
first attributed the striae observed on rock fragments in 
the Permian breccias to ice action. Fig. 5 shows a 
striated pebble. Many specimens exhibit abrading, rubbing, 
and grinding actions, their rounded edges being worn flat as 
if by a rasp. It is probably to the work of ice that the 
angular or chip-like fragments owe their shape, pressure or 
frost having broken up larger masses. Certain fragments of 
the ore bearing striations have been examined by Prof. T. G. 
Bonney and Prof. J. W. Judd, who both agree in considering 
that these particular markings are not due to ice action. 
Quite recently I have discovered rock fragments associated 
with the iron ore nodules in the breccia, the striae on whose 
surfaces cannot possibly, to my mind, have been produced by 
movements of the rocks en masse. One or two nodules 
exhibit faulting. The stones themselves are fractured, but 
have been re-cemented. To great squeezing of the stones 
one amongst another, when in the breccia, I consider this 
fracturing to be due. Again great pressure must have 
produced a singular comparatively large and deep depression 
or smooth hollow upon the exterior of one of these fragments. 
Now, this cup-sliaped hole has probably been made by another 
and harder pebble lying in contact with it in the original 
deposit, which has gradually forced, or as it were, screwed or 
rubbed itself into its neighbour’s side. This depression, 
which fits the finger end, has been formed since the stone 
was originally broken up and came to rest in the breccia, 
because folded or turned back over the fractured side of the 
fragment is part of a kind of lip or thin edge standing out 
beyond the general surface of the mass in an irregular ridge 
or wall of hard haematite, which forms the rim of the said 
dimple. It seems to me that this peculiar feature has been 
brought about by the more or less continual action of great 
dynamical pressure—in other words, pressure resulting from 
