Correspondence — A. R. Hunt. 479 



Berry Head quarries there stood for long a large dyke of red rock 

 left isolated by the quarrying of the limestone, This, I believe, was 

 subsequently car-ried off to build a church with. All these I have 

 only observed from the water. On the strand under the old Naval 

 Hospital are the celebrated intersecting Permian dykes, and near the 

 breakwater there is a massive dyke in the low cliff. There appears 

 to be a mass of sandstone in the quarry between Brixham and 

 Fishcombe Cove ; and in the northern boundary limestone of the 

 Fishcombe Yalley and Cove there is a pipe filled with sandstone. 

 Small dykes occur in the rooks between Elbury and Broadsands, 

 and north of Broadsands there is au outlier of pure sandstone 

 abutting on the limestone under the railway. All the foregoing are 

 fine sandstones. But a few hundred yards further north, in Saltern 

 Cove, we have the celebrated case of the stratified conglomerate 

 lying on the planed edges of the Lower Devonian thin-bedded slates 

 and grits. 



Then on the south face of Eoundham Head we have the section 

 figured by Mr. Hobson,i but further east on the same face we find 

 a much more intricate and incomprehensible example of the most 

 complex false-bedding, with contemporaneous erosion and alternate 

 beds of rough conglomerate. Then on the Paignton side of 

 Eoundham Head there is, or was, a cliff-face showing their bedding 

 ■with one rippled surface ; and I once noticed a slab on the beach 

 with what I took for rain-pittings. Sun-cracks are occasionally 

 <3iscernible. Nearer Torquay, on the coast south of Livermead 

 Head, I noticed a bed of fine sandstone which had been channelled 

 and covered with a bed of conglomerate filling the channel. At 

 Corbons Head, near the Torquay railway station, we have some 

 Poikilitic sandstone. Lastly, at Labrador, north of Teignmouth, we 

 have the volcanic breccia overlying the ordinary conglomerate ; 

 some of this breccia being of peculiar altered rocks with blue 

 tourmaline, whose origin of derivation has never been positively 

 located. Further on, beyond Teignmouth, we have the often 

 described large masses and blocks, associated with the con- 

 glomerates. Now between placid lake shores and the most raging 

 torrents any one of the above cases could be tentatively explained ; 

 but to account for every variety of water action, from sun-cracks 

 and ripple-marks to torrential action over scores of miles in area, this 

 is difficult. 



Two or three details clash with authority, and at first sight with 

 the laws of nature, especially of hydrostatics and mechanics. No 

 alternate currents in opposite directions could produce the Eoundham 

 Head false bedding, and for a current to cover and fill up channels 

 of fine sand with stones is contrary to the axiom that it takes a more 

 rapid current to carry away stones than it does to remove sand. 



In a paper privately printed some years ago I described an hour's 

 experiments with currents and sand, and pointed out how there may 

 be two and even three parallel streams at the same time rolling 

 sand both to right and left and producing intricate overlapping 



1 See July Number, PI. XXIa, Fig. 1. 



