92 FOSSILIFEROUS HEMATITE NODULES IN LEICESTERSHIRE. 
In conclusion I may say that although the district has a 
less rich flora than I had anticipated, I do not regret having 
given it so much attention, for if the investigation has given 
me little I did not before possess, it has afforded me many 
pleasant rambles and many happy hours. 
Erratum.— In the “Midland Naturalist” for February, page 57, 
line 6, for “ Austrey” read “Ansley.” 
ON THE OCCURRENCE OF FOSSILIFEROUS 
HAEMATITE NODULES IN THE PERMIAN BRECCIAS 
IN LEICESTERSHIRE, 
TOGETHER WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THEIR ECONOMIC 
VALUE, &c. 
BY W. S. GRESLEY, F.G.S. 
( Continued from page 69.) 
Whilst preparing this notice, the author had occasion to 
examine some fire-clay workings in the neighbourhood (at 
Swadlincote), where the clay beds and overlying strata are 
well exposed in an open-cast working in the side of a hill. 
The lower part of the “ baring ” (the strata overlying the 
clay beds in an open-hole working of this kind) consists of 
argillaceous shale of the ccal measures (usually of a blue- 
grey colour at other places where the same clays are worked 
in the district), of a blotched, variegated, or mottled appear¬ 
ance ; the colour of the blotches and bands being purple and 
red. Now this shale contains very numerous nodules of red 
haematite of a rather soft and jointy nature; round, oblong, 
disc, and kidney-shaped ; and they peel off very much on the 
outside. On removing several of these nodules from their 
beds, I observed that the red stains on the surrounding shale 
lay very much more closely together than further away from 
the nodules, and that a regular banded or series of concentric 
zones or contours of red lines were often seen to run round 
or exist in proximity to the haematite. These nodules are 
chiefly septarian in structure, are thus nearly solid, and 
often furnish compact steel-like ore, displaying parallel zones 
of concretionary structure. Some of them exhibit many 
varieties of stages between clay ironstone, limonite, and red 
haematite, in layers around a central nucleus. Fibrous ore 
is sometimes seen lining small cavities in the nodules, and as 
