272 H. J. Lowe — Devonshire Geology. 



Miocene times. Instead of considering the Bovey beds as a unique 

 deposit within our boundaries, we are hereby directed to regard 

 them as only a small portion of once widely extending beds that is 

 saved from the destruction of denudation that most of the formation 

 has met with, by sinking into the hollow in which they are now 

 found. "VVe also learn from these extracts that the gravels and sands 

 which are found capping the hills bordering the Bovey area are 

 really stratigraphically below and form the basal portion of these 

 deposits, the whole series being of Middle Eocene age. We are to 

 consider them further as western portions of and once continuous 

 with the Lower and Middle Bagshot beds of Hampshire, of fresh- 

 water origin, the detrital material of an Eocene river which flowed 

 from the west. 



The following examination of some portions of this theory applies 

 generally to the deposits in question that are to be found in the 

 neighbourhood of Bovey, and is an attempt to ascertain whether 

 this view, as compared with the older theory, more satisfactorily 

 interprets the geological facts within this area, when the natural 

 inferential and collateral questions arising from it are considered. 



And first in respect to the river. Presumably as the gravels, 

 sands, and arenaceous clays which form the lower member of this 

 series are to be regarded as river drift, we must infer that the 

 removal of all the chalk and a portion of the greensand that once 

 covered the area now overlain by these gravels was also the work of 

 this river. If so, thei'e must have been no inconsiderable thickness 

 of chalk lying over the Haldon area destroyed by this river, not in 

 the usual way of cutting through it, but by sweeping the whole area 

 of the Cretaceous deposits, entirely in some parts, and down to 

 a portion of the Greensand in others. Accompanying this destruction 

 was the conveying from higher elevations westward of similar 

 material to that removed, and its distribution over the area thus 

 eroded, i.e., the deposition of the gravels, etc., now termed Lower 

 Bagshot beds. The coarseness of much of the material of these 

 beds demands the assumption of a rapid current and consequently 

 a comparatively high angle of elevation to the land westward. The 

 size of the river is another point of remark, since its width within 

 the district indicated as measured by the extent of these gravels, 

 taken either north and south or east and west, must have been at least 

 12 miles. The present boundaries have, of course, been much 

 narrowed, yet further east similar criteria must give even greater 

 width. Now the length of the river could not be in proportion 

 to the width, even though this portion might be considered a part of 

 its estuary (which the coarseness of the detritus would scarcely 

 warrant), for it is supposed to flow from the west or south-west. 

 From Mr. W. H. Hudleston's address ' before referred to it appears 

 that only 200 miles west of South Devon the edge of the deep basin 

 of the Atlantic is met with, the limit of the European land area in 

 that direction and the boundary of a geologically permanent drainage 



1 Trans. Devon. Assoc, 1889, p. 33. 



