264 W, Pengelly, Esq. [May 25, 



Bolt, the limestones, slates, and associated sandstones, of both the 

 south and the extreme north of the county, are the oldest rocks in it ; 

 that they belong to, what is known to geologists as, the Devonian age 

 of the world ; that is, they are the equivalents or contemporaries of the 

 old red sandstones of Scotland and other districts ; that Professor 

 Sedgwick regards them as divisible into three groups, namely, the 

 Plymouth, or oldest, the Dartmouth, and the Barnstaple groups ; that 

 only the two first occur in South Devon, whilst all three are found in 

 the north of the county ; that the second, or Dartmouth group, has 

 not been found to contain organic remains ; that the richly fossiliferous 

 beds of South Petherwin, in Cornwall, belong to the Barnstaple series, 

 whilst the slates of Looe, Polperro, and other parts of the same county 

 belong to the Plymoutli group, v. 



He then said — " Doubtless you have all learned from the public 

 prints that two geological scholarships have recently been founded 

 at Oxford. Were this the time and place, it would have given 

 me great pleasure to have expressed my grateful sense of the 

 service which the foundress has rendered to geology, and through 

 it to science generally, in thus, not only giving a stimulus to the 

 study of it in a place so every way important as that ancient seat of 

 learning, but also by recognising it as a desirable, if not, indeed, an 

 essential, part of the education of the general student ; ' and especially 

 of those destined for the ministry of the church, if they would hope to 

 maintain the position which the interests of religion require them to 

 maintain.' * These words are a quotation from the document drawn 

 up by the foundress, and accepted or endorsed by the University 

 authorities. Truly the day has passed away when the prevalent feel- 

 ing was echoed by the sarcasm of the poet — 



* Some drill and bore 

 The solid earth, and from the strata there 

 Extract a register, by which we learn 

 That He who made it and revealed its date 

 To Moses, was mistaken in its age.' — Cowper. 



" My object, however, in alluding to this subject, here and now, is 

 just to say that a collection of the Devonian fossils of Devon and 

 Cornwall, which I had the honour to make at the request of the 

 foundress, was presented by her to the Oxford University Museum, in 

 connexion with the scholarships. In drawing up a brief account of 

 this collection, some of the salient facts connected with the fossils of 

 the district under consideration were brought somewhat prominently 

 and, in a certain degree, methodically before me ; hence this evening's 

 discourse. The fossils on the table are from my own private, not the 

 Oxford, collection ; but duplicates of many of them will be found in 

 that series, whilst several of the corals are the specimens figured in 

 the monograph, on the British Devonian Fossil Corals, issued by the 

 Palaeontographical Society." 



* Times Newspaper, February 9th, I860. W 



