334 The Geology of Devizes. 
Cretaceous nomenclature: one is to find a new name for the group 
of beds now ealled Gault and Upper Greensand; tke other is to 
adopt the name which is used for some of the equivalent beds in 
France. The first plan is, I think, the better one, but, unfortunately, 
it is very difficult to find a name that is both appropriate and eu- 
phonious. Fitton, when opposing the introduction of the names 
Upper and Lower Greensand in 1824, suggested “ Merstham Beds” 
for the former; but a compound name is inconvenient, and an 
adjectival form analogous to Vectian would be much better. 
Now there is no place more fitted to serve as a type locality than 
Devizes, for—as we have seen in the first part of this paper—both 
the Gault and the Greensand facies are well developed, the fossils 
they contain afford a basis for establishing a complete succession of 
‘zones, and there are many good exposures of the strata in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the town. 
The town of Devizes does not appear to have had a very ancient 
origin ; there is no evidence of its having been a Roman settlement, 
and it is not mentioned in Domesday Book. From papers written 
by Canon Jackson and Canon Jones, and published in this Magazine 
(vol. ix., p. 31, and vol. xvi., p. 255) it would seem that the town 
sprang up round the castle built by Bishop Roger circa 1130. In 
order to obtain a site for this he took a slice out of each of the two 
manors that belonged to him (Bishops Cannings and Potterne) at 
the point where they met and where the King’s manor of Rowde 
also met them; the castle built at this point was called “ Castrum 
ad divisas,” z.e., at the branching of the boundary lines, The place 
was long called “ Zhe Devizes,” and as the name was not a Roman 
one we need not recur to the strict Latin spelling in forming an 
adjective, but may use a Latinised form of the modern name, 
namely, Devisian. 
The other alternative, of adopting one of the French names, would 
have the advantage of avoiding the introduction of a new name, but 
it so happens that, though the French Cretaceous series is similar 
to ours, the French geologists have divided it in a different manner. 
They place the beds which answer to our Gault and Greensand 
partly in the Addien and partly in the Cenomanien étage, and they 
