Dr. Alexander Ircing — The Trias of Devonshire. 169 



■tlie Sid. It contains fragments of grit and quartzite, and is 

 calcareous." ^ 



So the bed described by Professor Hull (H, fig. 2) as " a basement- 

 bed of hard calcareous breccia " may be seen to be no fiction, as 

 is implied in Mr. Soraervail's remarks. The hammer told me it 

 was hard as compared with these red rocks in general. Recollecting 

 that the rocks which furnished the fragments lay probably to the 

 westward, we should expect to find the brecciated structure less 

 pronounced, and the rock itself more feebly developed, as we work 

 •eastwards. 



Mr. Somervail makes a remark in his paper (p. 460) as to difference 

 of the line of strike of the beds in the Otter and the Sid valleys. 

 That is, however, but a glimpse of the obvious, it adds nothing to 

 •evidence either way and need not detain us. 



He goes on to say : " The Otterton breccias are not again brought 

 ■up . . . . at the fault at the Chit rock." Of course they 

 are not found there on the east side of the fault, but that rock — as 

 both PIull and I have recognised, and as sections in and about 

 Sidmouth show to an unprejudiced observe!" — is Bunter, and there- 

 fore at a lower horizon in the series. They do not, however, 

 '■' occupy a much lower horizon," though they are hidden (doubtless) 

 underground some distance below sea-level, as my reading of the 

 section implies, on the western side of the fault; and they crop out 

 in the Otter Valley two miles to the west at about 70 feet O.D. at 

 places mentioned in paper C, just as we should expect, when the 

 faulting visible in the cliff-section (to which I have drawn attention 

 in my three papers) and the slight easterly dip of the Lower Keuper 

 beds between the Chit Rock fault and the Otter are allowed for. 

 Mr. Somervail appears to have overlooked the faulted synclinal 

 (A, p. 152) visible in the Keuper strata to the west of the Chit 

 Rock fault ; but even allowing for that, I do not think I have 

 greatly over-estimated the fault-throw at the Chit itself, with its 

 mural western face ; the estimation being based on a comparison 

 of what is seen at the Chit Rock and to the west of it, with what 

 is seen in the open daylight succession in the cliffs to the east of 

 the Sid ; and I venture to say there need be no great difficulty in 

 establishing the identity of horizons on both sides of the valley 

 in which Sidmouth lies if the observations recorded in my paper A 

 (pp. 150, 152) are duly considered. It is extremely unlikely that, 

 if we could restore the strata which have been destroyed in the 

 erosion of the intervening valley of the Sid, and restore the rocks 

 on either side of the fault to their original planes of deposition, we 

 should find the 150 feet or so of strata marked by calcareous con- 

 cretions (A, p. 150) thinning out in such a series of strata to the 



1 I recollect uoticing at the time how the mouth of the Sid was blocked by a dam 

 • of shiug-le, through which the water percolated in reverse directions at high and low 

 tide. Is it worth while to ask if, in the course of fifteen years or so, this shingle- 

 bank may not have been driven by tidal action further east, and covered up the lower 

 portion of the section as Hull and I saw it, with the obliquely bedded Bunter Sand- 

 stone below the breccia ? That question any resident in the locality can answer 

 for himself. 



