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DEEP BORING AT SAPCOTE, LEICESTERSHIRE. 
DEEP BOEING AT SAPCOTE, LEICESTERSHIRE. 
In a paper in your last number on the “ Syenites of South Leicester¬ 
shire,” Mr. W. J. Harrison, F.G.S., refers to a boring made some years 
ago, about two miles east of Hinckley, at Sapcote Ereeholt, by Mr. 
J. A. Bosworth, F.G.S. Mr. Harrison states that after passing 
through 540 feet of red marls, the boring was carried down through 
1,100 feet of hard slates. In the next sentence, without any explan¬ 
ation, he decides that these slates were Cambrian. If he had made 
the least enquiry he could scarcely have failed to learn that this was 
one of the few borings carried out under the supervision of a competent 
geologist. The cores were all examined by Mr. Robert Etheridge, 
F.R.S. He discovered in them Flemingites (Carruthers), and so 
settled that the so-called slates belonged to the Coal Measures.— 
John D. Paul, Leicester, 21st February, 1884. 
[Perhaps Mr. Paul will kindly refer me to any statement by Mr. 
Etheridge that the lower beds reached at Sapcote were true coal 
measures. I am well aware that somebody else said that Mr. 
Etheridge said so twenty years ago, but that is not evidence. I need 
not say that I have made every possible enquiry as to the age of 
the Palaeozoic rocks reached in the various borings made of late 
years in the centre, south, and east of England; I have visited 
the places, examined the cores, and consulted all available sources 
of information. In my paper on the “Quartzite Pebbles of the 
Trias, and on their Derivation from Ancient Land in Central 
England,” I have used a portion of the information so obtained; 
in the paper on the “ Syenites of South Leicestershire,” to which 
Mr. Paul refers, I only mention the Sapcote boring incidentally, 
and do not, therefore, go into details. The fact is that the key to 
the true age of the coarse much-jointed slates reached in the 
several borings put down at Sapcote, Leicester, Market Bosworth, 
etc., lies in the discovery, made by Professor Lap worth and myself 
early in 1882, of the Cambrian age of the rocks exposed in the 
Stockingford cutting, near Nuneaton. Until that time these 
Stockingford rocks were also supposed to be Lower Coal Measures, 
and were so mapped by the Geological Survey. Now these very 
rocks at Stockingford have been referred to by Mr. Bosworth (by 
whom the Sapcote boring was executed) as being similar to the 
strata reached at Sapcote. The Sapcote boring was made nearly 
twenty years ago; it is possible that Mr. Etheridge may at that 
time have been of opinion that the lower beds there reached were 
of Coal Measure age, though he has published nothing on the 
subject. It is also just possible that the boring there may have 
passed through a stratum of coal measures lying between the 
Red Marls and the Cambrians. Still, I think it more probable that 
the whole of the lower beds pierced at Sapcote were of Cambrian 
age. Has Mr. Paul any authority from Mr. Etheridge to state 
what his opinions were, and are, as to the age of the rocks alluded 
to ? If so, I shall be glad to discuss the question with the latter 
gentleman. — W. J. Harrison.] 
