During the summer of 1885, in excavating for a small reservoir for colliery purposes at Moira, three miles west of Ashby-de-la Zouch, au interesting deposit of a kind of Limonite Iron-ore was met with, the following description of which may interest some of the readers of the Geological Magazine.The bed occurred about five feet below the surface soil, near a small stream, at a place called “Hanging Hill” [see Geol. 1-inch Map, Quarter-Sheet No. 63, N.W.]. In thickness it hardly reached a foot, but its extent was not proved; it rested unconformably upon stiff blue clay of the Coal-measures, and was overlaid by yellowish clay, loam, sand, etc., unstratified, containing a few pebbles and other drifted matter; it was principally composed of nodules and fragments of nodules of earthy yellowish brown ironstone, of similarly formed pieces of very hard and compact light grey siliceous stone having a thin crust or shell of compact dark brown iron-ore, (probably göthite), of sandy nodular masses largely composed of limonite; of fragments and small nodules of fossiliierous hard red hæmatite generally coated with a bright red skin which is often powdery; also specimens of compact brown iron ore having a yellow ochre coating, sometimes the compact red and yellow hæmatites are associated in the same sample, the latter variety appears to form a kind of shell to the red ore, though occasionally the two kinds exist in thin alternating bands.
