BUDLEIGH-SALTERTON PEBBLE-BED. 323 



the deposit is considered ; and they are found only occasionally by the men who break 

 the pebbles for road-material, and for which they are well adapted on account of the 

 hardness of their composition and their durability. 



The fossils have been extensively collected during many years by Messrs. Vicary, 

 W. Linford, Winwood, Wyatt-Edgell, Valpy, Carter, Pengelly, Box, and others, who, 

 in the most liberal manner, forwarded for my examination and use every specimen 

 of Brachiopod, as well as fossils of other classes, that had fallen into their hands. 

 Thus, I have been enabled to give descriptions and figures of some forty species. I 

 would therefore avail myself of the present opportunity to tender to those scientific 

 friends, as well as to Messrs. Etheridge, McKennyHughes, Dr. Woodward, A. E. 

 Ussher, Brodie, Whitaker, Perceval, Harrison, and others, my grateful thanks for 

 the help and information they have so unreservedly imparted to me on this subject. 

 Nor must I omit to thank in a similar manner M. Gaston de Tromelin, M. Lebesconte, 

 M. Marie Rouault, and Prof. Moriere, for the loan of very extensive series of Normandy 

 and Brittany specimens bearing upon the subject of this Monograph, as well as for the 

 valuable information they have liberally afforded me. I have thus been enabled to 

 compare very minutely and carefully a series of Erench species, and upwards of a 

 thousand specimens from sandstones and quartzite rocks in situ; and these, in many 

 cases, agree in every respect with those found in our sandstone and quartzite pebbles at 

 Budleigh-Salterton. 



Mr. W. Linford states in one of his papers that " the pebbles are scattered more or 

 less over a district bounded on the east by the River Otter, and on the west by the Rivers 

 Exe and Clyst — a width of country varying from five to ten miles, also extending from 

 the coast on the south for twelve or thirteen miles north, viz. from the cliffs at Budleigh- 

 Salterton to Straightway Head, where they thin off, and, it is believed, terminate at 

 Pallaton, whither they have been traced." Near the village of Budleigh-Salterton, in 

 the cliff, the pebble-bed attains a thickness of from eighty to ninety feet. It is also 

 quite certain that at the time the Triassic waters were drifting these pebbles the land 

 extended to a considerably greater distance in the Channel, for the action of the waves is 

 continually carrying away large portions of the cliff, the whole shore being scattered with 

 the pebbles washed out of it. 



In 1869, and previously, while examining an extensive collection of the fossiliferous 

 pebbles lent to me by Mr. Vicary, I was surprised to find that a large proportion of the 

 fossils of the various classes, and especially of Brachiopoda, were of a Devonian type, and 

 that no " melange " of Silurian and Devonian forms did ever occur in the same pebble ; 

 every individual stone containing specimens or species belonging to one or to the 

 other period. One of the most abundant forms was the well-known Devonian Spirifer 

 Verneuilii, which was often found in the same pebble with other equally well-known 

 Devonian species. 



I also found that those pebbles that contained the " Gres Armoricain " species, viz. 



