'S I 1 v 1 (' I i' 4 f 
2 FOSSILIFEROUS HEMATITE NODULES IN LEICESTERSHIRE. 
1. —Tlie manner in which, and the localities where 
the nodules occur. 
2. —A more detailed description of the stones. 
3. —Bemarks upon certain individual specimens. 
4. —Origin of the haematite. 
5 . —Uses in the arts and manufactures. Value, &c. 
Mining notices. 
6. —Concluding observations. 
1.—It is in studying the superficial geology (the recent or 
drift deposits) of the district that these haematites are brought 
more especially into notice. 
They occur in the shape of nodular lumps and angular 
or broken fragments from the size of one’s fist to mere specks 
or the smallest of pebbles. They appear to be distributed 
rather indiscriminately over a considerably large tract of 
country in certain districts around the town of Ashby-de-la- 
Zoucli, especially on the south, south-west, and west sides, 
from one to five or six miles distant. They are met with 
immediately beneath, as well as mixed up with, the surface 
soil, and here and there have been turned up in considerable 
numbers at various depths in making excavations of different 
kinds ; the beds of streams also have yielded quantities of 
them. They are reported to have been picked up at some 
distance from the Ashby-de-la-Zouch area, namely :—In 
Nottinghamshire ; at Newton Solney, near Burton-on-Trent ; 
Spondon, near Derby ; at Ashbourne, Over Haddon, Sandi- 
acre ; at Hugglescote, near Coalville, where they occur in a 
deposit of consolidated calcareous breccia, which was noticed 
in this Magazine (see Vol. VIII., 1885, p. 237), &c. Thus 
they contribute to form the alluvium or most recent period 
of the physical geology of the district. Secondly, they 
occur in precisely similar forms and sizes in the Permian 
series of the same neighbourhood, in a breccia.* In these 
Permian strata,—called by Prof. Hull “ meagre traces,” 
—I suppose because they are only a few yards in thickness,f 
thc lnematite pebbles and fragments are mixed up promis¬ 
cuously with a variety of other rock-fragments, sub-angular 
boulders, &c., amongst which are sandstones, in colour, white, 
yellow, brown, red, purple, &c., often micaceous; quartz (vein- 
quartz), enclosing patches of greenish slate; quartzite boulders 
and pebbles; puddingstone, granitic rocks; clay slate of 
red and ot green tints, fragments of igneous rocks, coarse 
jasper, hornstone, chert, lumps of silicious and of red 
♦See “Memoir of the Geological Survey of Great Britain— 
Leicestershire Coal Field,” by E. Hull; p. 57, et scq. 
f Thirteen yards thick at Measham, Derbyshire. 
