4'24 Correspondence— Mr. Sorace B. Woodward. 



PEOFESSOR PHILLIPS ON THE DEVONIAN QUESTION. 



SiE, — The address delivered in 1869, by John Phillips, at West- 

 ward Ho ! and which has just been communicated by Mr. Hall (see 

 Geol. Mag., July, 1878, p. 307), seems to contain the latest views 

 of that geologist upon the Devonian rocks, though not, I believe, his 

 latest expression of them. A more recent statement is given in the 

 " Geology of Oxford and the Valley of the Thames" (1871), pp. 79, 

 80. As far as I can understand, these views of Prof. Phillips do not 

 differ so very materially from those advocated by Jukes. In the 

 address just mentioned, Phillips says, " Gentlemen of Devon, never 

 give up the independence of your country, hold to the North Devon 

 series, and if it is the case, as Mr. Godwin- Austen invites us to be- 

 lieve it is, that they do not belong to the Old Eed Sandstone series, 

 do not let us conclude that because they do not belong to that par- 

 ticular class, they are nothing at all." 



In the " Geology of Oxford," etc., are the following passages, 

 " The Old Eed Sandstone is followed in Devonshire, and still more 

 remarkably in the South of Ireland, by a series of shales, grits, and 

 limestones, with a large suite of fossils, having on the whole a con- 

 siderable analogy with the still richer associations of marine life in 



the Carboniferous Limestone Near Linton, in North Devon, 



and south of Plymouth, we may satisfy ourselves of the fact that Old 



Eed Sandstone underlies the Devonian beds From this series 



of rocks to the Carboniferous strata which succeed, the transition is 

 easy, so easy indeed that, in the opinion of Sir E. Griffith and Mr, 

 Jukes, the whole of the Devonian series may be united with the 

 lowest members of the Irish Carboniferous group (Yellow Sandstone 

 and Carboniferous shale) . What seems ascertained truth is the close 

 approximation in time, in character of deposition, and in forms of 

 life, of the South Hibernian and South Welsh rocks ; while the 

 North Devonian strata contain with these a somewhat lower group, 

 not distinctly represented in Wales or Ireland."^ 



Here, then, we find that Professor Phillips would separate the Old 

 Eed Sandstone from the Devonian rocks, while he speaks of the 

 Devonian faima as "continued into the cognate though later Car- 

 boniferous Period." I think by the term Carboniferous Period, as 

 here used, Professor Phillips referred especially to the fauna of the 

 Carboniferous Limestone. But his views, so cautiously expressed, 

 seem to approximate towards those of Jukes, and to render their 

 differences chiefly a question of terms or classification. Certainly 

 they are distinct from the contention of Mr. Etheridge, " that the 

 Devonian system, as a group of strata, both physically and palaeon- 

 tologically, may be (as long ago proposed) naturally and con- 

 veniently divided into a Lower, a Middle, and an Upper Series, and 

 that there is valid reason for believing that this system equalled in 

 time the whole of the deposits of the Old Eed Sandstone proper." 

 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxiii. p. 686.) A statement which 

 is perhaps a little modified by a subsequent admission (p. 690) that, 



^ These remarks were quoted by me in a review of the Devonian Question, Quart. 

 Journ. Science, Jan. 1873. 



