88 report— 1877. 



our Dartmoor, and which we know were the scenes of glacial labours on a 

 most magnificent scale, whilst we have done no more than, if we have done 

 so much as, to show that Devonshire was glaciated at all — Ave can scarcely 

 hesitate to dismiss the hypothesis of the Berry-Stone Rock being a travelled 

 block. 



Again, to have travelled from Auswell Rock, or any spot in that neigh- 

 bourhood, the blocks must have bid defiance to at least many of the hills and 

 valleys of the interjacent country. True, their route for a part of the way 

 might have been the Dart valley ; but they must have left this as high up 

 as at Staverton, and been regardless of the contour of the country throughout 

 the residue of their journey ; and since they abound at the level of the River 

 Harber, at Leigh Bridge, that contour must have closely resembled that 

 which obtains at present. Of those at a distance from it, there are none at 

 so high a level as the base of the Berry Stone itself. 



Further, had the Berry-Stone Hock, or any of the undoubted boulders 

 south of it, travelled from Auswell Rock, we might surely have expected 

 that, here and there, and at by no means wide intervals, blocks of the same 

 character would have presented themselves in the intervening country ; but 

 it is admitted, even by those who have diligently sought them, that, so far 

 from any thing of the kind being met with, the boulders of East Leigh, as 

 alii arly stated, are confined to a narrow zone, having the Berry-Stone Bock 

 on its northern margin, and without a single block to tho north of that pile. 



Finally, it is difficult to believe that such a mass could have fallen on a 

 glacier without being divided along some of its numerous joints ; in other 

 words, that a pile traversed by so many divisional planes could, after such a 

 fall, have remained so large. 



The foregoing reasons, as well as the general aspect of the rock, forbid tho 

 acceptance of the notion that it is a travelled block, and compel me to hold 

 that it occupies the place it always did, and that it is the parent of the nu- 

 merous blocks scattered over the district immediate!}' on the south. 



With regard to the characters which distinguish it so strikingly from tho 

 surrounding formations, if it has undergone metamorphosis at all, the fossils 

 it yields show that it has not been to an extent sufficient to obliterate them. 

 Unfortunately they are too ill-preserved for specific identification, so that they 

 fail to tell us whether they belong, like the Auswell Rock, to the Carboniferous 

 period, or, like the adjacent "shillet" and slate, to the Devonian era. If, 

 however, the Rock has been metamorphosed, it is not inconceivable that 

 subterranean granitoid rocks may exist in various directions very far from 

 Dartmoor, and, without reachiug the surface anywhere, may in certain places 

 rise very near it in sharp conical masses, and that such metamorphosis as 

 the Berry Stone has undergone may be due to such a subterranean boss. 

 Such an explanation of the highly metamorphosed condition of the rocks 

 extending from the Start Point to the Boll Tail, in the southern angle of 

 Devonshire — the cause of which is no more exposed to view than in the case 

 now under notice — has been suggested by Dr. Harvey Hull, F.G.S., and the 

 late Mr. Bcete Jukes, F.R.S. &c. (see Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. vol. xxiv. 

 pp. 439, 440, 1868, and ' Notes on Tarts of South Devon and Cornwall,' 

 . p. 15), and a glance at the known distribution of the granitoid rocks 

 in Cornwall, Devonshire, and Lundy Island will show that it has at least an 

 air of probability. 



The extension of the Berry-Stone pile, though now confessedly very limited, 

 was of necessity considerably greater before the crowd of huge boulders wa3 

 severed from the mass; and, as already stated, there can be little doubt that 



