506 . Notices of Memoirs—W. H. Hudleston— 
Confining our attention for the present to the New-Red rocks, one 
would suppose that if the above speculations have a good foundation, 
the evidences of volcanic rocks derived from the disintegration of the 
old Dartmoor volcano ought to have been much more abundant in 
the Triassic conglomerates than they have hitherto seemed to be. 
But the further investigation of this matter must be deferred until 
we have considered the chronology of the New-Red beds. 
We now perceive the import of the question put by our pro- 
pounder of riddles, “Is there east of Exmouth a break in the ‘red 
rocks’?” So recently as 1881 Mr. Pengelly wrote: “I incline to 
the opinion that our Red Rocks, taken as a whole, belong to the 
Keuper; or, if not, that all three sub-systems of the Trias are 
represented in Devon.” Of course, when Mr. Pengelly thus infers 
the existence of the middle member of the Trias, he can only mean 
that the Muschelkalk is represented in time. 
Mr. Ussher, four years previously, had given in the Transactions 
of the Association the results of his experience in the classification 
of the Triassic rocks. His view was that whilst in the Midlands 
there is complete unconformity between the Bunter and Keuper, 
in Devonshire the Triassic beds present a conformable series. He 
also showed that the beds cut out at Straight Point and Exmouth, in 
the south-coast section, are visible in the inland districts, thus practi- 
cally answering Mr. Pengelly’s question in the negative. The once 
prevalent notion, therefore, that the whole of the Devonshire Trias 
is of Keuper age, a notion which seemed to have the support of high 
authority, must be abandoned. A series of marls and sandstones, 
called by Mr. Ussher ‘“ Middle Trias,” he thought might roughly 
represent the Muschelkalk in time, whilst his ‘Lower Trias,” 
consisting of sandstones and breccias with igneous fragments, so 
well developed between Dawlish and Watcombe, is mainly of Bunter 
age. ‘The older beds would presumably occur to the westward, but 
there does not seem at this time to have been a suspicion of Permian 
on the part either of Mr. Ussher or Mr. Pengelly. Mr. Ormerod, 
in his notes on the deep borings in the Trias at Teignmouth, also 
describes the beds between the Exe and the neighbourhood of 
Torquay as belonging to the Bunter. 
In a communication to the Geological Society Mr. Ussher speaks 
of the lowermost beds of the south-coast Trias as far exceeding their 
more northerly equivalents in thickness, and as affording a strong 
probability that a reconstruction of the English Channel valley 
would exhibit a still greater development of beds, dating as far 
back perhaps as late Permian times. It is thus evident that Mr. 
Ussher considers that a large extent of New-Red rock has been 
destroyed in the formation of the English Channel, and possibly 
portions may yet be ‘proved in the bed of the Channel itself. Mr. 
Worth, as you know, considers that he has evidence of the existence 
of Triassic rocks in siti fifty miles to the south-west of the Triassic 
outlier at Cawsand, in Plymouth Sound, but it is rather a peculiar 
feature in this case, that the supposed submarine Trias resembles 
the Keuperian or eastern variety of the Devonshire Red Rocks. Mi. 
