OF THE SOUTH DEVON COAST. 3 
in the granite bosses of Dartmoor and of sundry districts of Cornwall. 
All these observers, however, had been obliged to labour without the 
aid of the microscope ; yet it appeared to me from their statements 
that the question was one in the settlement of which that instru- 
ment would be of exceptional value. Accordingly, last Haster I 
spent a week in examining the coast section from Torcross to the 
eastern side of the Salcombe estuary, as far as Portlemouth, and 
from some distance north of the town of Salcombe on the opposite 
shore round by the Bolt Head and Bolt Tail to Hope Cove (see 
Map, fig. 1). Favoured by exceptionally fine weather I had time 
enough to traverse some of the more difficult parts of the coast 
section three or even four times, and to collect a considerable series 
of specimens, the more important of which have been subjected 
to microscopic examination. ‘The results of these studies I now 
lay before the Society. As will be seen, there are several matters 
relating to the stratigraphy of the district upon which I have not 
been able to come to asatisfactory conclusion. Still I hope to have 
succeeded in clearing up some difficulties, in narrowing the issues 
involved, and incidentally in throwing light upon one or two 
difficult general problems*. In excuse for the incompleteness of 
some parts of this paper, I may plead that the region presents 
unusual difficulties. The magnificent cliffs sometimes render a 
close scrutiny impossible, and their bases are unapproachable except 
_ in a boat, and in the calmest weather; while in the neighbourhood 
of Salcombe, for a considerable distance, the gardens and enclosures 
around houses make the shore difficult of access. Further, the 
indubitably metamorphic series exhibits but little variety; it 
consists of a thick mass of a chloritic rock, overlain and perhaps 
underlain by a dark mica-schist, and these are bent into such sharp 
folds that when the green rock and the dark schist emerge from the 
sea, it is difficult to say which is the upper of the two. Nature, 
in fact, if | may be allowed the expression, seems to have taken a 
pleasure in puzzling the geologist by placing the rocks at critical 
sections, in a nearly vertical position, or by bringing together on 
opposite sides of a fault rocks, which, though really very different in 
the amount of metamorphism which they have undergone, to the 
unaided eye bear a very close resemblance one to another. I may 
say, however, that I had no hope of clearing up my difficulties by 
any moderate increase of the time allotted to my work in the field, 
and am therefore compelled by various duties to leave to others 
the final settlement of some of the questions proposed in this paper. 
2. Torcross to the Start Point. 
The little village of Torcross, sheltered from the southern gales 
by a rocky headland, stands on the margin of a singular sheet of 
water called the Leey. This is one of those freshwater lakelets 
* The nature of these has rendered necessary the occasional repetition of 
details of stratigraphy already given by earlier authors. 
+ There is another example (completed, however, by the intervention cf man 
Hee 
