258 , THE MORTE SLATES AND ASSOCIATED BEDS. [May 1 896. 



coast, much broken, and the beds near the lines of fractures much 

 seamed with quartz-veins. All the beds are strongly cleaved, and 

 the cleavage-planes are either vertical or with a slight inclination 

 towards the south. There are, here and there, a few thin sandstone- 

 bands, but the majority of the rocks are hard, cleaved slates, and 

 flags of a greyish colour. Where the hard bands occur they are 

 usually much broken by the cleavage, and the broken fragments 

 frequently give to the rocks quite a nodular appearance. 



The slates dipping at a high angle can be traced as far south as 

 the Lifeboat House, and also in the bed of the stream at the foot of 

 (Dhallacombe Hill, to a height of about 100 feet. Above this the 

 ground rises rapidly, and a quarry which has been opened for 

 building-stone at a height of about 230 feet, and distant from the 

 last exposure of Morte Beds about 500 feet, shows massive purple, 

 red, and grey grits and sandstones folded and much broken. These, 

 and an exposure close by on Potter's Hill, are the lowest of the 

 Pickwell Down Beds found on the coast, and as they are strongly 

 ripple-marked they must have been deposited in shallow water. 

 Still, their broken condition would indicate a faulted junction at 

 this point. In the quarrv one dip is to S.S.E., another to S.S.W., 

 and on Potter's Hill to S.S.E. at 40°. The Pickwell Down 

 Beds extend in an easterly direction, and may be again examined 

 in several quarries on the high ground between here and the 

 Poxhunter's Inn, on the road from Ilfracombe to Barnstaple. 

 Opposite the inn, on the western side of the railway, there is a large 

 quarry, where very massive beds of sandstone are bent into gentle 

 folds, and on the northern side crushed and broken as if near a fault. 



The Morte Slates are well exposed in the railway-cutting at 

 Willingcott Bridge, and also at Dean, which is about | mile 

 north of the Foxhunter's Inn. At the latter place they dip 

 northward at about 70°, and differ somewhat in appearance from 

 those exposed at Woolacombe, because a large number of hard 

 bands of a fine-grained sandstone are interstratified with the 

 slates. In following the junction between the Morte Slates and 

 the Pickwell Down Beds up to this point, I could come to no 

 other conclusion than that a fault separated them, and that as a 

 consequence the same beds were very seldom in contact. Beyond 

 West Down, and at Bittadon, the indications of an important fault 

 between the Morte Slates and the Pickwell Down Beds are less 

 marked, and the latter dip to the south at as low an angle as 15° 

 near the inn at Bittadon. I searched carefully at* and about 

 Bittadon for evidences of a passage, but everywhere there appeared 

 to be a sudden change from highly-cleaved slates, dipping at a 

 high angle, to massive sandstone-beds with a low dip. It is a 

 marked characteristic of the Morte Series that they are mainly hard, 

 slaty, and flaggy beds made from fine muds, and that the few sand- 

 stone-beds are composed of well-rounded grains of quartz in an 

 argillaceous matrix. When compared with the overlying rocks, the 

 almost entire absence of mica is somewhat striking. 



The Pickwell Down Beds which, in this area, immediately succeed 



