File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12683251435).jpg

1856.. PLANT -^UPPER KEUPER SANDSTONE. 371
Fig. 1 . — Section of the Keuper Sandstone on the North-east side of
the Railway ^cutting at Shoulder of Mutton Hill, near Leicester.
3. Drift, with boulders of Syenite, &c. : 8 to 10 feet thick.
2. Soft white sandstone, " Middle beds : " 14 to 1 6 feet.

• . Black carbonaceous band, with supposed AI^cb.
  

1 . Thin marly sandstones, ' ' Bottom beds : ' ' exposed to the depth of about 2 feet.
Average dip about 5° to the South.
This shows the middle member from 14 to 16 feet thick. It con-
tains numerous fragments of pure coal, no doubt from the Ashby
field. On the top are alluvial deposits, containing remains of Deer
and Ox, with nuts, leaves, and vegetable debris ; and Drift-clay with
granitic boulders and detached and worn fossils from the Oolitic,
Liassic, and Carboniferous formations. Where the upper surface of
the thick soft beds is exposed by the removal of the drift, it is found
to be very irregular and grooved, and is much harder than the mass
of the beds (which can be rubbed into sand with the fingers), and
seems to contain lime, which has agglutinated the particles of silex
strongly together, — forming, in fact, a kind of hard skin, thus pre-
serving the soft sandstone below. The upper member I consider to
have been here entirely denuded ; and its debris has assisted in form-
ing the numerous sand-beds found so abundantly along the river-
valley. The accompanying section (fig. 2, p. 372) from the Red Clay,
on the west, to the Lias, on the east, will serve to illustrate this.
In support of this view, I may mention that I have taken many
specimens of the thin sandy shales containing the Annelid-markings
in the sand- and gravel-pits, at a depth of 15 feet from the surface.
They are shghtly rounded and worn, and mingled with rolled Oolitic
and Liassic fossils. It is obvious that these worn specimens could
not have been derived from the lower member of the Keuper Sand-
stone ; as that would require the whole of the middle member — the
thick beds — to have been swept away. They can only be considered
as the remnants of the upper thin sandy shales ; the whole of which
appears to have been denuded in this locality ; and, from the scored
and worn character of its upper surface where exposed, a great por-
tion of the middle member (possibly to the extent of one-half of its
original thickness) was probably at the same time removed : in that
case, it would bring up the thickness of the middle portion to the
standard of the similar member in the Keuper Sandstone of Glou-