GEOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF CORNWALL AND DEVON. 265 



It is well known that they proved to be of Lower Silurian age, 

 but it may be doubted whether the lode then struck has been so 

 thoroughly worked as it deserves, or whether all the bearings of 

 the subject have been fully recognized. 



There is in the New Red Sandstone formation immediately 

 west of Budleigh Salterton, in south-east Devonshire, a remarkable 

 bed of pebbles, of which by far the greater number are quartzites, 

 commonly of a dull reddish colour. In 1863, Mr. W. Vicary, 

 F.G.S., announced that these quartzites contained fossils, and the 

 late Mr. Salter, F.G.S., described them as Lower Silurian species, 

 which had their analogues in rocks of the same character, not in 

 the tyjDical Lower Silurian country of Britain, but in Normandy ; 

 whence, as he believed, the pebbles had travelled.* From that 

 time to the present, the subject has again and again come to the 

 surface, and there seems no little reluctance to accept so large a 

 gift from our " natural enemies." There can be no doubt that, 

 come whence they may, their appearance as a part of the Devon- 

 shire Trias is a very remarkable phenomenon. Conglomerates — 

 more correctly, Breccias — are very prevalent amongst the red rocks 

 from Torbay to the Exe ; but the stones which compose them are 

 not well-rounded, are not quartzites, and the fossils in them are 

 not Silurian but well known Devonian forms. At Budleigh 

 Salterton comes a sudden irruption of a vast horde of beautifully 

 rounded and even polished quartzites, containing fossils known to 

 be of Lower Silurian age, but differing from those of the same 

 period found in British rocks. 



The bed is about 100 feet thick, extends inland for about nine 

 or ten miles along a line parallel to the valley of the Otter, and 

 by its outcrop forms the high ground a few miles west of that- 

 river. 



Some years ago, with Dr. Scott and Mr. Vicary, I visited 

 Goran to inspect the Lower Silurian rocks and fossils there. We 

 succeeded in finding a few specimens, but by no means good ones. 

 Nevertheless, it is a fact that the rocks, as well as the organic re- 

 mains they contain, have so strong a resemblance to those at 

 Budleigh Salterton that I have never been able to lose sight of 

 the probability — to use no stronger word — that the j)arent rocks 



* See Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond., Vol 20 (1864), pp. 283-302. 



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