72 KEY. A. IRVING ON THE RED ROCKS 



II. The Permian Age oe the ' Lower Eed Sandstones ' 

 OF Devon. 



The roiighlj^-bedded breccias east of the Exe {e. cj. at East Won- 

 ford, near Heavitree) form a good base from which to work the 

 sandstone series, and the breccias are seen to pass into the 

 sandstones by concordance of dip and by their recurrence in the 

 sandstones at higher horizons, as, e. g., at Bishop's Clist, where two 

 brecciated beds, each 2 to 3 feet thick, are seen in the roadside 

 ascending the hill east of the Clist, interstratified with strongly 

 current-bedded sandstones/ 



In the pit at Sandy Gate, nearly a quarter of a mile west of the 

 Clist, a similar dip is maintained. The only indication of the dip is 

 the occurrence of irregular irony bands, the sandstones being so 

 strongly current-bedded as otherwise to disguise the dip. The 

 western face of the pit shows a vertical wall of rock 90 -feet high. 

 The sandstones are of an uniformly deep red colour. 



In the coast-section east of Exmouth the laminated marly sand- 

 stones come on at first ver}'' feebly between the massive sandstones, 

 lying, according to Mr. Pengelly, ^ conformahly on the breccias just 

 outside Exmouth. These develope into massive and shaly beds of 

 marl, in the upward succession, gradually increasing in proportion 

 to the sandstones, until the marls supersede the sandstones alto- 

 gether, and form a continuous deposit several hundred feet in thick- 

 ness (500 according to Mr. Ussher), as they are seen, quite of the 

 Permian type of the Midlands, passing under the Budleigh Salterton 

 Pebble-bed in the sea-cliif. Similarly, the sandstones are at first 

 feebly developed between the breccias from Petitor to Dawlish, 

 showing a passage from the breccias into the sandstones, just as the 

 sandstones graduate upwards into the marls. In sj)ite of the some- 

 what Buuter fades of some of the sandstones, as they are seen 

 in the coast-section and in road-sections inland (which may be 

 accounted for by some ieaching-out of the irony colouring material), 

 they do not seem to have that character in such fresh sections as 

 that at Sandy Gate ; and for the reasons given above the difficulty 

 of recognizing them as Permian is trifling, as compared with that 

 which we have to face if we regard the marls (described above and 

 in my former paper) as an abnormal development of Lower Bunter. 

 The Sandstone-Marl series of Devon seems to correspond very well 

 with the Lower Permian of the Yale of Eden and the country north 

 of the Solway ; while they are evidently connected with the 

 breccias west of the Exe by a steady transition, and with them 

 answer remarkably to the description given by Sir Archibald Geikie ^ 

 of the more prevalent /acie^ of the Permian, as well as to that given 



^ Mr. Whitaker, ' On the Succession of the Beds of the New Red on the 

 South Coast of Devon,' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxv. (1869) p. 154, has 

 noted a similar recurrence of the breccias in a thin bed at Straight Point on 

 the coast. 



^ Quoted by Mr. Whitaker, loc. cit. 



3 • Text-book of Geology,' pp. 750, 751. 



