Reports and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 233 



Epoch by the writings of Dr. James Geikie and Dr. CroU, that onr 

 faith in the entirely Post-Glacial age of man requires considerable 

 modification, and we are forced to admit that he dwelt in this 

 country at any rate before some of the great epochs of cold which 

 glaciated our noi'thern counties. 



Enough has been said to indicate that this volume treating of the 

 Geology of the Penland contains matter of more than local interest. 

 It is well illustrated, and we can only regret that its price (forty 

 shillings) must have a very disadvantageous influence upon its 

 distribution. 



[P.S. — Since writing the notice of Mr. Skertchly's book on the 

 Penland, I have had the oppoi'tunity of again visiting Brandon under 

 his guidance, and have seen evidence which completely satisfies me 

 that some of the beds yielding paleeolithic implements are older than 

 the Chalky Boulder-clay. I hope Mr. Skertchly will soon make 

 public all the evidence upon which his interesting and most im- 

 portant discovery is founded. — H.B.W.] 



ISiEI^OieTS JLIsTXD IPIiOCIBIEIDIIsra-S. 



Geological Society of London. — I. — March 20, 1878. — Henry 

 Clifton Sorby, Esq., F.E.S., President, in the Chair. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. "On the Chronological Value of the Triassic Strata of the 

 South-western Counties." By W. A. E. Ussher, Esq., F.G.S. 



The author maintained that the general thinning-out of the Trias 

 in the South-Devon and West-Somerset area as it is traced north- 

 ward, of which he adduced evidence, proves that this area was not 

 connected with that of Gloucestershire and the midland counties 

 until the later stages of the Keuper ; and endeavoured to show by a 

 comparison of sections that the area east of Taunton and south of 

 the Meudips was not submerged before the deposition of the Lower 

 Keuper Sandstone, and probably not until the later stages of its 

 formation, the Quantocks acting as a barrier dividing the Bridge- 

 water area from the Watchet valley. He thought that a subsidence 

 progressing from south to north led to earlier deposition in South 

 Devon, and to a consequent attenuation of the lower beds towards 

 Watchet and Porlock. Hence the lowermost beds of the Trias of 

 the south coast are much thicker than their more northerly equi- 

 valents, and probably were still thicker where the English Channel 

 now flows, some beds perhaps dating as far back as Permian times. 

 The presence of numerous fragments of igneous rocks (quartz- 

 porphyries) in the basement-beds of the South Devon Trias, and 

 the absence of known corresponding rocks in the county, led the 

 author to infer that the cliffs and beds of the early Triassic sea were 

 composed of such rocks, any imdestroyed portions of which would 

 probably occur either under the Triassic beds near Dartmoor and 

 between Newton and Seaton, or in the ai'ea now occupied by the 

 English Channel. As continuity is evident only in the upper 



