174: Royal Society :— 
lished in 1808, supposes the lignite to have been the product of pine 
forests which grew where it is found, and that clay and other 
moveable matter must have been poured over them, in a fluid state, 
at different periods, from the craggy eminences around. Mr. Austen, 
in his ‘Memoir on the Geology of the South-east of Devonshire,’ 
states that the Bovey beds rest on a gravel equivalent to the lowest 
tertiary deposits, and is thus the first writer who addresses himself 
to the chronology of the formation. He makes the overlying gravels 
post-tertiary, but belonging to the “ period prior to the most recent 
changes of relative level of land and water and of climate.” Sir H. 
De la Beche, in-his ‘ Report of Cornwall, Devon, &c.,’ expresses 
surprise and regret that, excepting the lignite itself, no orgauie 
remains have been detected in the deposit, so that we are deprived of 
any aid by which it may be referred to any particular geological 
date ; and adds that ‘if the wood be, as has been supposed, analogous 
to oak and other existing trees, we should suppose the Bovey beds to 
have been formed towards the latter part of the supracretaceous 
period.” In 1855, Dr, Hooker read a paper before the Geological 
Society of London, “ On some Small Seed-vessels (Folliculites minu- 
tulus) from the Bovey Tracey Coal,” which was the first announce- 
ment of the discovery of identifiable fossils in the deposit. Besides 
the fossil just named, Dr. Hooker described a cone of the Scotch fir, 
Pinus sylvestris, said to have been found in one of the uppermost beds 
of lignite, and from it he came to the provisional conclusion that the 
Bovey beds belong to the Post-Pliocene epoch. In 1856, Dr. Croker, 
of Bovey Tracey, sent to the same Society a paper in which he men- 
tioned the oceurrence of large “ flabelliform leaves,’’ together ‘* with 
tangled masses of vegetable remains in some of the higher beds,’’ » 
In 1860 Sir Charles Lyell and Dr. Falconer visited Bovey, and 
returned with the impression that the formation belonged to the 
miocene age. The latter introduced the subject to Miss Burdett 
Coutts as one which it was eminently desirable to have fully and 
carefully investigated. Miss Coutts having soon after visited the 
district with the author, requested him to undertake an investigation 
of the deposit, which he accordingly did ; and at once engaged Mr. 
Keeping, the well-known and experienced fossil-collector of the Isle 
of Wight. | 
Sections of the deposit at the coal-pit show a series of beds natu- 
rally dividing themselves into three parts, namely,— 
Ist, or uppermost, a bed of sandy clay, containing large angular 
-and subangular stones, chiefly of Dartmoor derivation, unconformably 
covering the lower beds. No stones occur below this. 
2nd. A series of twenty-six beds of lignite, clay, and sand, the base 
of which is a bed of ferruginous quartzose sand, in some places 27 
feet thick, in others less than one foot, but which everywhere oceurs 
as a well-marked feature in the pit-sections. Excepting this bed, 
sand is almost entirely confined to the uppermost part of the division. 
3rd. A set of forty-five beds of regularly alternating lignite and 
clay. 
The stones by which it is characterized, and its unconformability, 
