FOSSILIFEROUS H/EMATITE NODULES IN LEICESTERSHIRE. 33 
relationship far back into the past, showing by what steps 
each group has reached its present position, and how it is 
related to its neighbours by descent and by cross-breeding ; 
showing also how the force-waves, whose courses are repre¬ 
sented by these material groups, tend always to rise to a 
climax and decay, and indicating the position of each group 
in the cycle of its own wave, whether in its ascending or 
descending phase, at its climacteric, or extinct. 
Such a picture of Nature would be immensely more true, 
more interesting, and more instructive than the instan¬ 
taneous photograph. At present our knowledge of the past 
is too fragmentary for any such picture to be drawn except 
in roughest outline, but knowledge is accumulating fast, and 
probably the present method of classification will be as 
antiquated fifty years hence as Aristotle’s is now. 
ON THE OCCURRENCE OF FOSSILIFEROUS 
HAEMATITE NODULES IN THE PERMIAN BRECCIAS 
IN LEICESTERSHIRE, 
TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR ECONOMIC 
VALUE, &c. 
DY w. S. GRESLEY, F.G.S. 
(Continued from page 8.) 
3.—We will next notice one or two rather remarkable 
features possessed by individual specimens,—forms which are 
very uncommon in haematite such as we are considering. 1. A 
porpliyritic or coarse gritty combination of haematite and 
quartz, &c.; the latter occur in various stages of decom¬ 
position or transformation of silica into peroxide of iron, 
and are of various colours, viz. : transparent, purple, yellow, 
pink, red, &c. This fragment' has been cut through and 
polished. A few cavities are seen where the grains have 
been so rotten as to crumble away. The specimen is 
exceedingly hard ; quartz will not scratch the irony portions. 
The wavy parts seem to indicate a gradual inflow or filtration 
of iron that has replaced nearly all the original matter in 
those particular regions. 2. Another very similar specimen 
contains minute pseudomorphous iron ore of soft texture and 
of red and yellow tints, exhibiting concretionary structure. 
These seem to have been formed in pre-existing hollows, 
originally occupied by some other mineral: the haematite 
with which the grains and inclusions are cemented together 
