BUDLEIGH-SALTERTON PEBBLE-BED. 31 & 



will be best understood from a glance at the sketch we here append from a drawing by 

 Mr. W. Linford, of Exeter, who has devoted much time and study to this remarkable 

 deposit and locality. 



to be hornblendic, and whose texture is often so compact as to give it a jaspideous character and toughness 

 equal to Lydian stone. It is most frequently veined with white quartz, and being often brecciated with 

 angular fragments identical with the Granitoid and Neptunian pebbles respectively, will be more particularly 

 described presently under the name of ' Volcanic Breccia.' 



"NEPTUNIAN. 



" 1. Quartzite. — The material here is chiefly sand of various degrees of fineness, more or less mixed 

 with grains of pink felspar and little particles of a glistening mineral, like talc or mica, cemented bv a 

 recrystallization of the quartz into a firm tough rock. The usual colour is grey, but it may be almost 

 white, or yellowish, or ferruginous — red or variegated with mixture of these colours. The form here is also 

 usually elliptical or subcircular and compressed, more so than in the Plutonic rocks, which, from their 

 hardness, toughness, and massive unstratified structure have not yielded so much to attrition. Albeit 

 there are pebbles of quartzite, which from its hardness are almost sometimes subglobular. In many there 

 is a laminated structure bearing evident signs of stratification, which, together with the presence of 

 organic remains, leaves no doubt that they come from the Neptunian or stratified formations. In size 

 these pebbles also vary from a foot in diameter downwards. 



" 2. Grits. — This name I would apply to some coarse quartzites, such as are composed of grains 

 varying in size from those which can be easily seen by the unassisted eye to those of which the coarsest 

 puddingstone is composed. It is necessary, however, for the student not to confound such pebbles 

 with similar ones that may be formed by an agglomeration of the contents of the New Red Sandstone. 

 Those belonging to the Old Beach may vary in size from a foot in diameter downwards, like the quartzites. 



" PLUTO-NEPTUNIAN. 



" Volcanic Breccia. — Of this I have nothing further to state than that the pebbles of it are composed 

 of angular portions of the Granitoid and Neptunian rocks, cemented together by the tough black jaspi- 

 deous material already described as Volcanic. They are variously composed, vary in size from a foot in 

 diameter downwards, and seldom present a compressed form from the extreme toughness of the binding 

 material. 



" Relative proportions of the pebbles, as to amount, in the Old Beach. — By far the largest proportion 

 of the pebbles (that is, the quartzites') in the Old Beach in the cliff may be seen to have come from the 

 Neptunian formation. Next to this come the black volcanic and the volcanic breccia pebbles, which 

 may average one per cent. The granitoid are not unfrequent, nor are the porphyroid pebbles, but the 

 latter, from the decomposing influence of the potash in the feldspar, may, from their whiteness and pulve- 

 rulent state, be easily seen in sit&, where nothing but the grains of hyaline quartz will often be found to 

 have remained intact. 



"NEW BEACH. 



" Of course the pebbles of the ' New Beach ' are chiefly derived from the old one, together with the 

 harder detritus of the New Red Sandstone and the flinty remains of the Cretaceous series which formerly 

 rested upon it. : all now more or less additionally rounded by attrition from the influence of the losses which 

 are at present going on ; wherefrom, also, portions of the clay-strata and fragments of bricks soon present 

 exactly the same kind of compressed elliptical or circular form which characterises, for the most part, the 

 pebbles in the ' Old Beach,' thus bearing evidence of the way in which the fragments of the latter received 

 their form, and therefore the marine origin of the beach itself. All the pebbles found in the Old Beach 



