320 BRACHIOPODA OF THE 





The Triassic Cliff, Budleigh-Salterton. 



a. Broken Cliff, b. Flag-staff, West Down. c. Sherbrook Lake. d. Silurian and Devonian Pebble-bed. 



f. Red Marl and Sands. e. Budleigh-Salterton. 



In vol. i, p. 61, 1797, of Polwhele's 'Devon ' we find, so far as we are aware, the 

 first published account of the pebbles that occur in the cliff and neighbourhood of 

 Budleigh-Salterton. The author notices the respective dimensions, composition, and 

 distribution of the pebbles, but makes no mention of any fossils. 



Mr. Carter informs me that he must have been the first who detected organic remains 

 in the quartzite boulders, for in 1835 he picked up a pebble 1 full of impressions and 

 internal casts of a small Orthis (0. Budleighensis), and at the same time made a collection 

 of the different kinds of pebbles, now in the Albert Memorial Museum at Exeter. In 

 1864 Messrs. Vicary and Salter gave an excellent account of the pebbles. In this 

 communication Mr. Salter describes and figures eleven species of Brachiopoda, and 

 refers them, as well as several species belonging to other classes, to the Lower-Silurian 

 period. He suggests, also, in his description of three of them, viz. Spirifera anti- 

 quissima, Sp. Davidsii, and an unnamed RJiynchonetta, that some of the pebbles con- 

 taining these species may perhaps have had a Devonian origin. Mr. Salter says, also, 

 that the mass of the Budleigh-Salterton fossils are Normandy types of the " May " Sand- 

 stone, that some belong to the " Gres Armoricain," that several of the species have 

 been already named in France, and that some of the most conspicuous shells, though 

 apparently not identified, are characteristic of both sides of the Channel. Had Mr. 



are equally and proportionally found in the new one, excepting the Porphyroid pebbles, which, from their 

 frequent decomposition in situ, are seldom sufficiently hard enough to undergo the ordeal of tbe waves 

 without entirely going to jsieces ; hence, specimens of this pebble are only occasionally met with in the New 

 Beach. There are also a few pebbles of quartzite breccia in which the veining cement is not black ; but 

 here the fragments are of the same kind, showing that such pebbles must have come from Neptunian 

 strata, which had been shattered by succession in situ, and subsequently cemented by some of their own 

 materials before they were finally broken up. Such specimens might be adduced to show that the 

 quartzite pebbles are derived from Neptunian formations of different ages, but by far the most reliable 

 evidence of this kind has been obtained from the nature of the organic remains that they contain ; and 

 this will be supplied by their palaeontology. 



" By far, also, the most prevalent and striking mineral of these pebbles is the pink opaque feldspar, 

 both in the original Plutonian rocks and the Neptunian quartzites that have been derived from them." — 

 (H. J. Carter, F.R.S., &c.) 



1 This fossiliferous pebble has been liberally deposited in my collection by Mr. Carter ; and in April, 

 1863, it had been mentioned by him to Mr. Pengelly and others. 



