Notices of Memoirs—R. N. North—Geology of Plymouth. 423 
we turn, we seem to be able to explain the facts in one way only, 
namely, by the violent action of water, which, when we consider the 
continental nature of the phenomena to be explained (proving con- 
tinuous conditions over wide areas), must have been on an over- 
whelming scale. Wherever we turn over a vast continent, we find 
the evidence uniform. The ossiferous gravels of Germany and 
England, the sheets of sand in Scandinavia, the diluvium in France, 
the loess in Central Germany, differing in texture and in contents, 
all merge into one another, all have the same character of mantling 
the country with continuous deposits independent of the configura- 
tion of the surface and of the drainage, and, whether we test them 
individually or grouped together, point an unmistakable moral, 
namely, a wide-spread diluvial movement, and there seems to be 
no possible argument against it save a number of metaphysical 
phantasms about Uniformity, worthy only, may I say with all defer- 
ence, of the period when the @ priori problem of a chimeera disport- 
ing itself in vacuo was deemed a reasonable subject of Philosophical 
investigation. 
INF OMMTCsHS (Oly | IMEI MF Oum SiS 
THe Rocks IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD oF PLYMOUTH AND THEIR 
STRATIGRAPHICAL Retations. By Ricuarp N. Worrs, F.G.S. 
R. R. N. WORTH, F.G.S., read a paper on “The Rocks in the 
Neighbourhood of Plymouth and their Stratigraphical Rela- 
tions,” at the recent meeting of the Devonshire Association at 
Exmouth. Pointing out that there was now abundant evidence of 
the existence of granitoid rocks in the Channel area off the South 
Coast of Devon and Cornwall, with which the gneissic rocks of the 
Eddystone Reef were associated, Mr. Worth traced the influence of 
these rocks into Plymouth Sound. Portions of the Shovel Reef on 
which the Plymouth Breakwater was partly founded were asserted 
to be gneiss; and whether this was so or not, there was ample 
evidence of metamorphic action on the shore rocks of the Sound, 
especially on the east, in the immediate neighbourhood of the pre- 
sumed gneiss; in addition to the evidence of the near presence of 
such an intrusive granitic boss as that which probably caused the 
metamorphosis of the Eddystone Reef, and the rocks of the Start 
Point, which was to be found in the extraordinary displacements 
and contortions of the Staddon and Bovisand rocks. ‘There was 
more direct evidence also of the existence of granitoid rocks in the 
immediate Plymouth district, in a boss of rocks at St. Budeaux, 
of very limited area, which seemed to form a kind of connecting 
link between the granite of Gunnislake and that of the Channel, and 
apparently indicated the existence of a granitic spur from the main 
granitic axis of the western peninsula. 
The confusion into which the rocks of South Devon had been 
thrown was largely caused by the upheaval of the Dartmoor granite, 
