A. Champernowne — The Devonian Question. 125 



Glaciation of the Northern Part of the English Lake District. Quart. Jo urn. 

 Geol. Soc. vol. xxix. p. 422. 



On the Origin of some of the Lake Basins of Cumherland. Ibid. vol. xxx. p. 96. 



The Glaciation of the Southern Part of the Lake District, and the Glacial Origin 

 of the Lakes of Cumherland and Westmoreland. Second Paper. Ibid. vol. 

 xxxi. p. 152. 



Notes on the Archaeological Eemains of the Lake District. Trans, of the Cumh. 

 and West. Ant. and Arch. Soc. part ii. vol. iii. p. 241. 



IV. — The Devonian Question. 

 By A. Champernowne, M.A., F.G.S. 



IN last month's Geological Magazine there is much (by three 

 writers) that bears upon the Devonian Question, and I would 

 now add a few words on the same subject, which is of the greatest 

 interest to me. 



In the first place, notwithstanding that two of the writers are 

 my personal friends, I think that the united criticisms upon Prof. 

 Hull's proposed classification exceed what the nature of the case 

 calls for, as that scheme contains the most essential elements of 

 truth. I have myself been in North Devon during the last autumn 

 with Mr. Ussher, and we hope to give a further account of our work 

 and the conclusions arrived at. My chief object in going there 

 was to test certain opinions I had before expressed with great confi- 

 dence (in these pages and elsewhere), and, as a result, I have proved 

 to my satisfaction that those opinions were wrong. 



Neither by fault, nor inverted junction along the line indicated by 

 Jukes, is there any wholesale reduplication of the North Devon 

 Series. The fault I had already taken to be disproved by Mr. 

 Etheridge's paper (Q. J. G. S. 1867). In the last paragraph of 

 Mr. Kinahan's paper he observes, that " Jukes' fault has not been 

 disproved, and that the Irish geologists who have been in Devon 

 believe in its existence." This, however, from Prof. Hull's classifi- 

 cation, is evidently not his opinion, as he places the Ilfracombe and 

 Morte slates beneath the Pickwell or (Upper) Old Eed Sandstone, 

 but he suggests an unconformity at the base of the latter, of which 

 there is no evidence. 



Regarding the Pickwell as what Mr. Kinahan aptly calls the 

 Carboniferous Old Eed, I will venture to say that in nine out of ten 

 Western European areas a break 1 might be expected at a corre- 

 sponding horizon, but the North Devon marine sequence is almost 

 unique in its completeness. My former belief in an inverted passage 

 assumed perfect conformity at that junction, and of this conformity 

 there are indisputable proofs. 



1 Of all areas in which rocks helonging to the Siluro-Carboniferous interval are 

 developed, that of the Welsh horder counties, although geographically the nearest, is 

 perhaps the least comparable of any to the North Devon area, and the greatest 

 stumbling-block to a would-be " Devonian " disciple. In vain maybe the search 

 there for a break of any magnitude to be filled in from the latter area. Lacustrine 

 conditions may have prevailed more or less, from the final retreat of the Ludlow 

 types, until the waters of the Lower Limestone Shale united the " Welsh Lake " (see 

 Prof. Geikie's Lectures on the Old Red Sandstone) with the ocean. In South Ireland 

 and Devonshire, on the other hand, there are plain indications of an open sea to the 

 South and East, extending into the Rhine country. 



