306 T. M. Hall— On the Bocks of N. Devon. 



The followers of Jukes seem to confine themselves to those portions 

 only of the district which he had more specially studied — North 

 Somerset, Lynton and Pickwell Down ; searching in almost hopeless 

 despair amongst the lower rocks, instead of beginning at the other 

 end of the scale, with the Millstone-grit, and tracing the beds 

 downwards. As a result, the fossiliferous beds of the Upper 

 Devonian have been almost entirely neglected, and their relation to 

 the Carboniferous slates passed over. 



Possibly the real question at issue may not be settled in a satis- 

 factory manner until we get a new Ordnance Survey, with a six- 

 inch map on which to lay down our observations ; but in the mean 

 time I would submit that there was one geologist whose opinions 

 on the subject, had they been made equally public, would have been 

 received with all the respect due to his great local knowledge, and 

 his well-known caution in drawing inferences from facts. The 

 author of the "Paleeozoic Fossils of Cornwall, Devon and West 

 Somerset " can no more use his pen in defence of the Devonian 

 rocks ; but as one of his former pupils at Oxford, I know well the 

 unfailing interest he retained in everything relating to Devonshire, 

 both before and after Mr. Jukes's first paper was read to the Eoyal 

 Geological Society of Ireland, in May, 1865. 



The last visit paid by Prof. Phillips to North Devon was in 

 August, 1869. At the close of the Exeter Meeting of the British 

 Association, an excursion was made by about 200 of the members to 

 Bideford and Westward Ho ! and having been selected as the guide 

 for the occasion, I asked my old master some days previously if he 

 would add a few words to what I was about to say with reference to 

 the North Devon rocks. This, with his usual kindness, he agreed 

 to do ; and the short address he then gave was, it is believed, the 

 only one in which he publicly stated his views on the controversy 

 which at that time had apparently been brought to a termination by 

 Mr. Etheridge's exhaustive paper,' and by the subsequent death of 

 Mr. Jukes. Now the question has been re-opened, it seems only 

 fair that the opinions of one who was in every way so well qualified 

 to form and express them should be put on record for future use in 

 a more permanent shape than that of a newspaper cutting. 



As regards the accuracy of the following reprint, I may say that 

 the proofs were corrected by Prof. Phillips ; and on subsequently 

 receiving copies of the North Devon Journal in which it appeared, 

 he wrote to me from Oxford : — " The account is very accurate ; and 

 I wonder how any stenographer could take down the errea Trrepoevra 

 from the perch of rocks. In two parts only is there anything which 

 has struck me as requiring amendment, — when Murchison and 

 Sedgwick are mentioned, they seem to oppose one another. Not so. 

 They should be quoted as opposing De la Beche's classification, and 

 rightly so. Say 'immediately his conclusion was disputed by,' and 

 again a little earlier, for 'terms then unknown,' read 'then not 

 unknown.' "^ 



1 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 568. 



2 These corrections are shown in italics. 



