154 EEY. A. lEYlNG OjS' THE EED-EOCK 



bedded sandstones inland, they have a prevailing colour of yellowish 

 white with streaks of red, becoming, of coiu^se, more reddened by 

 exposure in road- and railway-cuttings, especially where (as it often 

 happens) the surface- soil contains much red marl ; and even in the 

 cliff- section their variegated (bunt) coloration is in places obser- 

 vable. 



The magnificent pebble-bed cut through in the coast-section at 

 Budleigh Salterton has had so much attention bestowed upon it that it 

 would be superfluous to attempt to describe it here minutely. While 

 the "pebbles " are for the most part of quartzite, it should be noted 

 that I observed in it occasional fragments of Dartmoor granite in 

 an advanced stage of disintegration ; but the important point is the 

 index as to their origin (in many cases) furnished by their contained 

 fossils of Silurian age. The bed thus appears to consist of a mixture 

 of detrital material derived partly from the rocks of the ancient 

 Devon highlands, and partly (mostly) from strata lying at a greater 

 distance (perhaps in Cornwall or Brittany, or the intermediate 

 region*). Whether the latter came directly from such sources or 

 were brought into their present locale indirectly by the waste of older 

 pebble-beds of Old Eed age, we have, perhaps, no means of deter- 

 mining. It leads to the necessary inference that considerable changes 

 in the j)hysiography of the region must have taken place in order to 

 bring into the basin materials from more distant sources than those 

 from which the materials of the older breccias and conglomerates 

 were derived. 



It seems pretty clear that the two series were deposited in dif- 

 ferent hydrographic basins which were far from being conterminous 

 with one another, the later (the Triassic) having been very much 

 the more extensive. I have inspected the collection of Silurian 

 fossils from the Salterton pebble-bed in the Exeter Museum, and 

 have had the privilege of seeing the private collection of Mr. Yicary, 

 The presence of these fossils in the pebbles, added to the extremely 

 smooth and worn condition (the pebbly roundness) of some 90 per 

 cent, of the Salterton pebble-bed (the materials which can be traced 

 to the breccia series further to the west not exceeding, I should 

 say, 10 per cent), together with the recognition in the fossils of a 

 strong Prench type by Salter, argue strongly for the view which is 

 here put forward. 



Whatever their source, there is to my mind very little difficulty 

 in recognizing in the beds which contain them representatives 

 of the great Middle Bunter pebble-beds, as these are splendidly 

 developed at Sutton Coldfield and elsewhere in the Midlands ; even 

 the pitting of the pebbles by the crunching effect of mutual pressure 

 is as common in the one case as in the other ; but they are not the 

 sole representative of that division of the Bunter. In the strata 

 which occur for about 100 feet above the main pebble-bed, and are 

 in part parallel and interdigitate with it, I recognized the pehlly 

 sandstone of the Middle Bunter, as this is exhibited in the Castle 



* Compare Bonney, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xl. p. 25. 



