CHAP. VIII.] TRIASSIC PERIOD. 117 



the Midland counties, and stretching thence through 

 Cheshire into Lancashire ; and a third on the eastern side 

 of the Pennine chain in Nottingham, Lincoln, and York, 

 but this seems to have been connected with the Midland 

 area by a narrow neck between Nottingham and Derby. 

 The Southern and Midland areas were separated by a broad 

 ridge of Palaeozoic rocks, which was not submerged till the 

 epoch of the Keuper, or Upper Trias. 



In Devonshire the Bunter consists of coarse breccias and 

 sandstones, the blocks and stones in the former having 

 been derived from the neighbouring Devonian and Car- 

 boniferous rocks. They have evidently been accumulated 

 under the action of rapid currents, being obliquely and 

 irregularly bedded, so that though their thickness appears 

 to be about 1,000 feet, their real depth at any one place 

 may not be more than 500 feet. Over these coarse-grained 

 beds are some 400 feet of marls and sandstones, succeeded 

 by 80 feet of pebble beds, which are sometimes compacted 

 into a conglomerate. 1 In many places the pebbles consist 

 of Devonian limestone and sandstone, like those found in 

 the underlying breccias, but elsewhere, and especially at 

 Budleigh Salterton, there are pebbles of sandstone and 

 quartzite which are different from any Devonshire rocks, 

 but some of which are identical in character and fossil 

 contents with certain rocks occurring in Normandy and 

 Brittany, viz., the Gres Armoricain and the G-res du May. 



It has, therefore, been surmised that these pebbles were 

 brought either from France or from land connecting France 

 with Cornwall, and since destroyed. This inference, how- 

 ever, has been somewhat weakened by the finding of similar 

 pebbles in the Trias of Staffordshire, and even if the 



1 These are placed by Mr. Ussher in his upper division of the 

 Devonshire Trias ; but as the whole series is continuous, I prefer to 

 treat them with the lower beds, as being comparable to the Banter 

 pebble beds of the Midland counties. 



