94 
THE LIAS MAULSTONE OF LEICESTERSHIRE 
of tlieir own powers, pass through childhood, youth, man¬ 
hood, and age; enjoy the pleasures and sorrows of conjugal 
life, but with only one object, as far as we can see, although 
in lesthetic eyes they may have a higher—to live and repro¬ 
duce their species, to increase and multiply, and replenish 
the waters. Of how many higher organisms could we say— 
nothing more. 
THE LIAS MARLSTONE OF LEICESTERSHIRE AS 
A SOURCE OF IRON. 
BY E. WILSON, F.G.S., CURATOR OF BRISTOL MUSEUM. 
(Continued from page 66.) 
North of Tilton Station, at Halstead, there is an extensive 
working of the West Yorkshire Iron Company in the upper 
beds of the weathered Marlstone at its outcrop on the 
hillside. The Maidstone Rock and underlying shales are 
also well shown in the railway cuttings immediately north 
of Tilton Station. In the neighbourhood of Billesdon 
there are several interesting exposures of the Rock-bed, 
which, in that neighbourhood, attains a thickness of over 
twenty feet. Billesdon Coplow, a hill famous in hunting 
annals itself, bears a small capping of this stone. Going 
south from Tilton the Maidstone Rock can be traced as 
a terrace on the hill sides by Lodington and East Norton to 
Allexton and Stockerston and thence by Hallaton to Slawston 
and Medbourn. In this direction a great change takes place, 
the Rock'bed thinning away very rapidly. At Billesdon and 
Tilton the Maidstone Rock is from eighteen to twenty feet in 
thickness, but at Allexton it is only two feet, and between 
Keythorpe and Hallaton not more than one foot in thickness. 
In the neighbourhood of Cranhoe, Hallaton, and Blaston the 
Rock-bed is so thin as to be scarcely traceable; it has, however, 
been observed in the outliers of Slawston Hill, Staunton Hill, 
and Great Bowden. South of the Welland the Maidstone 
reappears in a modified and attenuated form at* Ashley 
Sutton Basset and Market Harborougli, and three or four 
miles west of this latter place it forms an outlier between 
Gurnley and Laughton. 
To the north of Melton Mowbray the Maidstone constitutes 
a considerable outlier at Holwell. It is extensively quarried 
in the vicinity of that village by the Holwell Iron Company 
and the Stanton Coal and Iron Company. The ordinary 
ferruginous stone alternates with brasliy shell beds or jacks, 
