OP THE DEVON COAST-SECTION. " 79 



Red E-ocks as Permian, but it did not seem to him that the Authors 

 had brought forward any fresh evidence to enable a definite judg- 

 ment to be given on the question. 



Prof. HtJLL reminded Mr. Woodward that the determination of 

 the Permian age of the Breccias and associated strata in the Midlands 

 aud the West of England had been arrived at by the Geological 

 Survey after years of careful investigation, in which the late Director- 

 General, Sir Andrew Eamsay, took a leading part ; and remarked 

 that if he was sceptical as regards the geological age of these rocks, 

 it was not surprising that he should be so as regards their repre- 

 sentatives in Devonshire. 



Replying to the general observation that the Red Rocks of South 

 Devon appeared to be a continuous series, he reminded the speakers 

 that apparent consecutiveness or conformity of stratification did not 

 necessarily imply continuity of deposition ; of this we had an 

 example in the case of the Cretaceous and Eocene limestones of 

 Egypt and Palestine, which, although conformable over large areas, 

 were really separated by a wide gap in time, as the whole of the 

 species (as stated by Zittel) were different in these two sets of 

 calcareous strata. 



In conclusion, Prof. Hull maintained that the evidence for the 

 Permian age of the Lower Breccias of Devonshire was cumulative, 

 and, strengthened by the existence in them of contemporaneous 

 volcanic rocks, quite unknown in the Trias of Britain, was sufficiently 

 strong to carry conviction to his own mind. As regards the question 

 in which there was a little difference of opinion between himself 

 and Dr. Irving, viz. the relations of the Exmouth beds under the 

 Budleigh Conglomerate, that was of secondary importance, as this 

 Conglomerate might very well form the base of the Bunter Sandstone, 

 as it does in Staffordshire and other parts of Central England ; and 

 he hoped that the point would be determined by careful mapping of 

 each individual set of beds in the field. 



The Rev. A. Ieving remarked of the discussion, that many of the 

 criticisms were based on negative reasoning, and ignored a great 

 deal of positive evidence, which he had put forward in previous papers 

 on the Red Rock Series ; that it was waste of time to find fault with 

 nature because these leaves of her great stone-book were palseonto- 

 logical blanks ; that the double principle of lithological similarity 

 and comparative reasoning had been somewhat lost sight of by 

 several speakers (the latter, for instance, in the evidence derived 

 from contemporaneous igneous rocks in the breccias, being almost 

 unique in its cogency in this case) ; that he had been rather amused 

 to find the old ' Poikilitic ' error of continuity of sequence (which 

 he had himself fallen into in former years, and recanted, after more 

 extensive work in the field in England and Germany) cropping up 

 again. He was happy to find that Prof. Boyd Dawkins's view as to 

 the evidence of a distinct break in the series at the base of the 

 Pebble-bed, by comparison with what is known in the Lancashire- 

 Cheshire area, was so entirely in accord with his own, which he had 

 strengthened by citation from Prof. Hull's memoir of facts showing 



