The Cannington Park Limestone. By Hanvet CossHam. 
About four miles North-West of Bridgewater there is a patch 
of very compact crystalline Limestone that has long puzzled 
Geologists, and has been the cause of many anxious enquiries 
and some rather warm discussions. 
The peculiarly compact form in which it develops, and the 
almost entire absence of fossils has made it rather difficult to 
read, and for the last half-century it has almost unanimously 
been pronounced to be of Devonian age. 
Some years ago our late lamented friend Mr. Cuas. Moors, 
of Bath, hesitatingly hinted at the possibility of this formation 
being carboniferous and I know, from personal intercourse with 
him, that he always had grave suspicions that it would 
ultimately turn out to be so. But it is to Mr. Tawney that we 
are mainly indebted for a correct reading of this remarkable and 
interesting formation. 
Mr. Tawney, in November 1875, read a paper before the 
Bristol Naturalists’ Society in which, after a careful and 
valuable review of nearly all that had been previously written 
(1) by Mr. Lronarp Horner in 1816, who then pronounced it 
to be Limestone of the Devonian age. 
(2) By the Rev. D. Witt1ams in 1837, who in a paper read 
before the British Association, argued that it belonged to the 
lower portion of the Devonian. 
(3) In 1841 the late Professor Pariures confirmed this view, 
and contended that this limestone belonged to the same age as 
the Ilfracombe group. 
(4) Sir Henry de la Beche, who also about the same time 
contended that this rock belonged to the Devonian series, and 
to be of the same age as the Quantock hills, lying on the 
South-West. , 
