Correspondence. 41 



Whether this or a larger movement be the source of the ap- 

 pearances at Hitchin, I do not mean now to argue.^ But that the 

 clean-cut faults, passing through Chalk, pebble bed, and loamy- 

 gravels, exist in this locality, only needs a second visit to ascertain. 

 Indeed, as I hope I fully mentioned in a note to the paper (for I 

 have not the Journal at hand), one of these faults have been 

 previously marked in the sections given by Mr. S. V. Wood, jun. — a 

 fact I was not aware of when the paper was read at Somerset House. 



After all, in most cases, we only see what we look for ; and if 

 I had been examining the Chalk specially, I should probably not 

 have seen these dislocations. I am sm-e your correspondent could 

 not have been long at Hitchin without making many good friends 

 there, so I shall recommend him to go and dine with some of them 

 this holiday time, and pay a visit to the old chalk-pit again. 



I am, yours truly, J. W. Salter. 



Malvebn, iJec. 3r^, 1866. 



GLACIATION IN DEVON AND ITS BOEDERS. 

 To the Editor of tJie CtEOLOGical Magazine. 



Sir, — I have always distrusted my own power of observation in 

 Glacial and other superficial phenomena, for whenever I have made 

 an observation to a regular glacialist, or " drift describer," I have 

 generally had to stand corrected. It would not, therefore, be at all 

 surprising to me to find I was quite wrong in my conclusions as to 

 what appeared to me to be a glaciated surface on the cliff on the 

 banks of the Exe above Barlynch Abbey. 



The first time I ever was able to see these phenomena of rounding, 

 moulding, and striation, so as to recognise them, was in the S.W. of 

 Ireland, about the year 1851, under the guidance of the late Sir 

 Henry De la Beche. Since then I have had many opportunities of 

 observing them not only in Ireland, but in other parts of the British 

 islands and in the Alps. 



Coming down the valley of the Exe on the occasion described in 

 the letter published in your Magazine in 1865 (Vol. II. pp. 473), 

 I saw before me a cliffy ridge marked, as it appeared to me, pre- 

 cisely in the same way in which so many so-called glaciated surfaces 

 are marked. 



These markings being large and obvious, and my time being all 

 too short for geological observations of much greater importance, 

 I did not spend more than ten minutes in examining them. If, there- 

 fore, they are not glacial as my friend, Mr. Pengelly and Mr. Vicary, 

 have concluded, it only assm-es me of the wisdom of the old pro- 

 verb, ne sutor ultra crepidam, and warns me to stick to the rocks 

 themselves, and leave their external markings and superficial 

 covering to those whose tastes and powers of observation are more 

 suited to them than mine are. I hope, however, that some practised 



1 I may as well observe, that the faults at Hitchin station, large and small, are very 

 nearly parallel to one another— as in most of our faulted districts. I think this indi- 

 cates a more general movement than is implied in the idea of subsidence over cavern- 

 ous ground, such as may account for the minor flexures in the drift gravel. — J.W.S. 



