496 Mr. CoNYBEARE o;/ /Z'^ Strata near 



cliffs near the town presented very ample and numerous sections of 

 the stratified rock of the country ; Mr. Buckland and myself were 

 induced to visit it in the course of an excursion which we made in 

 the west during last summer. 



The best access to the town from the Hartland road is by a 

 private carriage way which has been cut through the grounds of 

 Sir James Hamlyn. This not only commands several advantageous 

 views of the lofty and well w^ooded ravine along the declivity of 

 which it winds, but offers in many places, where the rock has been 

 cut away for the purpose of levelling the road, striking instances of 

 that remarkable configuration of the strata, which is said to be 

 characteiistic of the grauwacke formation. To that class all the rocks 

 cf this neighbourhood may probably be referred. The principal 

 varieties are those known throughout Devonshire by the appellation 

 of dunstone and sh'illat ; the former answers pretty accurately to 

 the description usually given by mineralogists of that species of 

 grauwacke in which the fragments, supposed to be cemented 

 together by the intervention of a paste resembling the matter of 

 clay slate, are too small to be discerned even by the aid of a 

 considerable magnifier. The latter alternates with the former and 

 is evidently the finer grauwacke slate of the same nomenclature. 

 Of these rocks the coast between Clovelly presents the most 

 magnificent and interesting sections which we met with in the 

 course of our tour. Both varieties sometimes alternating in distinct 

 and well defined strata, sometimes appearing to graduate into each 

 other, and the compact species assuming the external configuration 

 of greenstone or serpentine. The strata inclined in every direction 

 and describing the most capricious and picturesque forms, both 

 curved and angular, open an abundant field of instruction to the 

 geologist, while they present difficulties of which neither the theory 



