ETHERIDGE DEVOXIAJN' ROCKS AND FOSSILS. 595 



south by a deep depression in the Porlock valley, caused either by 

 a great fault or depressed anticlinal. Whatever may be the cause, 

 it is now hidden, and covered by red sandstone and conglomerate 

 of Triassic age. This valley is continuous in direction with the 

 Lynton antichnal, and appears to be connected with the extensive 

 east and west faults that traverse St. Decumans, Watchet, Quan- 

 tock's Head, and Little Stoke, which are post-Liassie in time, and 

 greatly disturb the country. 



This range is the most elevated land in Somersetshire ; and the 

 entire mass is composed of hard red, grey, and variegated gritty 

 sandstones (micaceous in places), having partings of compact or 

 hard shales. The splinter}^ nature of these grits and sandstones 

 is peculiar, and unlike the general condition of the Old Red Sand- 

 stone of other areas in having a different fracture, and breaking up 

 into smaller cubical fragments under atmospheric denudation or the 

 hammer. They seem to have been deposited under different con- 

 ditions from the normal Old Red ; still they are the only members of 

 the West Somerset Palaeozoic rocks that at all resemble portions of 

 the Lower Old Red Sandstone series of the Welsh, Hereford, and 

 Gloucestershire areas. 



Constant research has failed to detect any organic remains, if we 

 except a few undeterminable plant-like remains (Fucoids), and, 

 here and there, what appear to be Annelide-burrows. Many excel- 

 lent sections are exposed between West Porlock and Culbone (the 

 seat of Lord Lovelace), along the picturesque road overhanging the 

 sea ; and everywhere the beds dip north-east, at angles varying from 

 15° to 40°, or about a mean of 30° ; their character is the same all 

 the way to the Foreland. This strip of high land, about two miles 

 wide, from Countesbury to Porlock Hill, is the northern face of the 

 anticlinal, the axis of which is in the gorge and valley of the East 

 Lynn ; the course of the stream from Oare is nearly coincident with 

 the direction of this anticlinaL 



The lowest members of these lower red sandstones are nowhere 

 exposed in this area ; and they are not to be sought for either along 

 this high ridge or in the elevated valley of the Lynn ; as the anti- 

 chnal nowhere clearly exposes them, it may not affect the lowest 

 beds. All that can be said is, that south of the gorge the Lynton or 

 Lower Devonian slates and grits are nearly horizontal for a consider- 

 able distance ; they then assume a southern dip, without inversion. 

 The characters of these two masses, i. e. the lower red slaty sand- 

 stones and the grey slates that repose upon them, are marked and 

 striking, structurally, physically, and palseontologically. 



These are the sandstones, slates, and associated grits which Pro- 

 fessor Jukes asserts to be the same (or on the same general horizon) 

 as those of Pickwell Down, Baggy Point, Marwood, &c., ten miles to 

 the south-west. This assumption is based upon the supposed ex- 

 istence of a great fault to the south with a northern downthrow 

 of many thousand feet, or a concealed anticlinal rolling the beds on 

 the south to the north, where they again appear, and thus placing 

 these Foreland sandstones and grits in the same geological posi- 



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