OF THE DEVON" COAST-SECTION". 69 



make the exact divisional line between the Keuper and the Upper 

 Bunter somewhat obscure, which is exactly what happens in the 

 Hawkstone and Grinshill district of Salop.^ 



This, however, leaves us face to face with a stratigraphical 

 question, which is not met by what is stated in my previous papers ; 

 the question, namely, whether the Amphibian and Reptilian remains 

 described by Mr. Whitaker in this Journal,^ those described by 

 Mr. Metcalfe,^ and those found by Dr. Johnston-Lavis,* do not 

 necessitate the downward extension of the Lower Keuper Sand- 

 stones, so as (following Mr. Ussher and Sir A. Ramsay ^) to include 

 the beds which contain those remains, and with this the recog- 

 nition of the thin breccias, described by myself and other authors 

 on the east side of the river Otter, as the basement-line for the 

 Keuper Sandstone. Some reason for an affirmative answer to this 

 question might be found in the identification of these remains by 

 palaeontologists as those of HyperodapedonJ' and the assignment 

 by Prof. Hull and others '^ of all the beds, in which remains of 

 Lahyrinthodon and Hyperodapedon are known to occur in the 

 Midland area, to the Lower Keuper Sandstone. 



But against this difficulty we may fairly urge the following 

 arguments : — 



(1) The improbability of such an inequality of development of 

 the basement-beds of the Keuper on the east and west of Sidmouth 

 as this would require.*^ 



(2) The fact that in Germany quite similar beds occur in the 

 Upper Bunter, which in section after section is seen visibly under- 

 lying the MuschelkalJc, and very frequently contains Labyrinthodont 

 footprints (as in the Jena district, at Karlshafen on the Weser, at 

 Kissingen, at Wiirzburg, in the Tauberthal, and at Hesseberg near 

 Hildburgshausen), while the skull of the Labyrinthodont Tremoto- 

 saurus Brauni (Burm.) was found in the Bunter near Bernburg, 

 and the remains of Labyrintliodon Riltimeyeri, described by Wieders- 

 heim, were found in the Bunter Sandstones of Biehen near 

 Basel.' 



The extreme poverty in organic remains which marks the 

 English Bunter does not hold good, then, for the same formation in 

 Germany, where (it is to be remembered) the interpolation of the 

 Muschelkalk makes the demarcation of Bunter and Keuper a matter of 

 certainty, and furnishes an important index of horizons, which we 

 do not possess in such a well-defined form in the British series. 



^ Hull, ' The Permian and Triassic Rocks of the Midland Counties,' Mem. 

 Geol. Surv. (1869) p. 64. 



^ Vol. XXV. (1869) p. 152. ^ Ibid. vol. xl. (1884) p. 257. 



^ Ibid. vol. xxxii. (1876) pp. 278 et sea. 



■5 Ibid. p. 283. 



^ Prof. Seeley simply describes Dr. Johnston-La vis's ' find ' as Labyrinthodon, 

 ibid. pp. 278 et seq. 



"' Mem. Geol. Surv. swpra cit. pp. 4-6 ; also App. A, p. 120. 



^ This, however, may receive explanation from the faulting at Ladram Bay. 

 I hope to examine this more closely ere long. 



9 See Credner, ' Elemente der Geologic,' 6th ed. (1887) p. 544. 



