PRE-CARBONIFEROUS FLOOR OF THE MIDLANDS 
69 
THE PRE-CARI30NIFER0US FLOOR OF THE 
MIDLANDS. 
BY W. JEROME HARRISON, F.G.S. 
( Continued from pa ye 40.) 
2. —The Syenites of South Leicestershire. —The little bosses 
of syenitic or dioritic rocks which crop out in South Leices¬ 
tershire have been so recently described by me in the 
“Midland Naturalist,”* that I need not now allude to them in 
detail. They are largely worked for paving-setts, &c., at 
Enderby, Narborougli, Croft, Stoney-Stanton-witli-Sapcote, 
and Barrow Hill—little villages lying on either side of the 
railway from Nuneaton to Leicester. In most of the stone- 
pits the Keuper marls and sandstones are well exposed, 
resting upon the eroded surface of the igneous rock, and 
showing in a striking manner the difference between stratified 
and unstratified rocks. The microscopic character of the 
syenite proves it to be allied to the Cliarnwood rocks of the 
same character. At one point (the lower quarry at Enderby ) 
the syenite is seen to break through a dull green slaty rock. 
This slate was assigned by the discoverers of the section 
(the Revs. E. Hill and T. Gf. Bouncy) to the Cliarnwood 
series, but I believe that it is of later date, forming part of 
the Cambrian formation, which probably encircles Cliarnwood 
on all sides, although its junction with the older rocks is (in 
that district) everywhere covered over and concealed by 
newer strata. 
But if Cliarnwood rocks themselves are not exposed in 
South Leicestershire these four or five low round-topped 
hills afford valuable evidence of an extension of the Pre- 
Carboniferous rocks for at least nine miles in a southerly 
direction. 
3. —The Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian Rocks of the Hartshill 
Pi any e. —Walking south-west from the hummocky rocks of 
Croft and Sapcote across the Triassic plain of South Leices¬ 
tershire, wo soon arrive at the foot of a well-defined ridge, 
which extends from Nuneaton, by Hartshill, to beyond 
Atherstone, a distance of six or eight miles. The rocks 
forming this ridge have a strike in strict accordance with its 
extension from north-west to south-east, and they dip to the 
south-west at high angles—from thirty to sixty degrees— 
rising abruptly from the Leicestershire plain on the one 
* Vol, VII., pp. 7 and 41. 
