504 Notices of Memoirs—W. H. Hudleston— 
Venn, with some supplementary remarks on the Blackdown Beds.” 
There he appeared to arrive at the conclusion that the Lima- 
parallela-bed of Black Venn is lower than the lowest of the 
Blackdown Beds, for it thins out before reaching Sidmouth. He 
again notices the general thinning out westwards. ‘These latter 
conclusions are somewhat at variance with his previous ideas that 
the Blackdown Beds represent the whole of the Gault, and he finally 
inclined to the opinion that the Blackdown Beds were Upper Green- 
sand rather than Gault. I have before pointed out that the Upper 
Greensand partly represents the Upper Gault of the south-east of 
England, and this interpretation will help to explain the apparent 
contradiction. 
2nd. The mode in which the clumps of Zurritella and Pectunculus 
occur in the Blackdown Beds reminds me of the similar way in 
which their modern representatives occur in the English Channel. 
Not far from Hope’s Nose is a muddy bed full of Turritella, showing 
how the shell is apt to accumulate from some cause or other in one 
or two particular spots, and throughout the Channel it is by no 
means uncommon to come across Pectunculus in great numbers at 
particular spots. 
New-Rep Beps. 
The New-Red question next demands our attention, since the 
Jurassic rocks of Devonshire are limited to a very narrow strip of 
Lias in one corner of the county. The phenomena in connection 
with the New-Red beds are of great interest in spite of their poverty 
in organic remains. We are as much interested in the composition 
of these beds as in ascertaining their precise chronological value. 
Thus two of Mr. Pengelly’s questions relate to the composition of 
_ Triassic pebble-beds. It would certainly appear from Mr. Davidson's 
determination of the Brachiopoda that a considerable portion of the 
Budleigh-Salterton pebbles were of Devonian origin or aspect, 
although there are a sufficient number of admitted or possible 
Silurian species. Thus Salter’s original proposition that they are 
Normandy types of the May-Hill Sandstone may in part be correct, 
the fossils being characteristic of beds on both sides of the Channel. 
The rocks from which such pebbles were derived are certain to be 
no longer in existence; the pebbles themselves are mere survivals 
of an ancient denudation, just as is the case with the flint pebbles 
whose origin we have lately been considering. It is not difficult to 
believe that both Silurian and Devonian beds were largely developed 
in portions of what is now the Channel area. Indeed the form of 
the present peninsula of Normandy clearly points in that direction, 
whilst projections of Paleeozoic rock from what is now the Devon- 
Cornwall peninsula may likewise have contributed their share. 
Hence an extension of the Gorran Haven beds, or of La Manche, 
points almost equidistant, may have been amongst the missing rocks 
from whose hardest parts some of these pebbles were long ago torn. 
There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that the English Channel, 
in anything like its present form, had any existence in Mesozoic 
times, and we may well believe this without going so far as Mr, 
