BUDLEIGH-SALTERTON PEBBLE-BED. 327 



consist largely of slates and shales, with some very thick conglomerates, some quartzites, 

 and a few beds of thin limestone, that the bands of quartzite and limestone have 

 yielded fossils (chiefly Orthidae), which are pronounced to be of Bala or Caradoc age by 

 Davidson and others, that they extend over nearly 200 square miles, and reach south- 

 wards beyond Halford River and westwards to Marazion. 



It is to Mr. C. W. Peach's energetic and persevering exertions and researches that we 

 owe the discovery of the Silurian fossils at Gorran Haven, Caerhayes, Verian Bay, and some 

 other places. He says that although the quartz-rock of Cornwall occurs in various places 

 along the coast from St. Austel Bay to Nasehcnd, near the Lizard, a distance of at least 

 forty miles, it is nowhere plentiful ; although thick, it is bedded ; and crops out only 

 occasionally : it is thus rather rare, and the fossils much more so, though, when found, 

 several occur together. 



Sir R. Murchison places the Cornish Lower- Silurian Rocks in his Caradoc division, 

 from their fossil contents. I have, however, failed to find from the Dodman district 

 reddish quartzites similar in colour to that which prevails at May, in Normandy, although 

 I have no doubt as to their being of the same geological age. 



As South Cornwall has been pointed out by Mr. Peach, Mr. R. Etheridge, and some 

 others, as the probable source of derivation of at least a portion of the Budleigh-Salterton 

 pebbles, I considered it necessary, as well as desirable, to make a minute and searching 

 examination of the rocks and fossils that occur in that portion of England, the necessary 

 material having been liberally lent to me out of the Museums of Penzance and Truro, the 

 Museum of Practical Geology, London, the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge, and the 

 Edinburgh Geological Society's Museum, and by Mr. Peach, Mr. Collins, and Major 

 Wyatt-Edgell. 1 I may therefore commence by observing that only a very small portion 

 of the rocks in question are fossiliferous. The fossils occurring here and there are 

 difficult to obtain, and are generally in a bad or indifferent state of preservation, so that 

 out of the large number of fragmentary specimens procured, a very small proportion 

 retained their natural shape. None, with the exception of a few Trilobites, had been 

 previously classified or illustrated. 



1852. M'Coy. Systematic Description of British Palaeozoic Fossils in the University of Cambridge. 



1867. Sir R. Murchison. Siluria, 4th ed., chap, viii, p. 145. 



18/8. J. H. Collins. Preliminary Notes on the Stratigraphs of West Cornwall — Trans, of the Royal 

 Geol. Soc. of Cornwall, 18/8. 



1880. J. H. Collins. On the Age of Central and West Cornwall— Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, 1880. 



1 I wish here to express my thanks to Prof. W. W. Smyth, F.R.S., President of the Royal Geological 

 Society of Cornwall, and Inspector of the Crown Mines of England, and to the Council of the same Society, 

 and to the Penzance Museum Committee, as well as to its Curator, Dr. C. Le Neve Foster, and Mr. W. 

 Ambrose Taylor ; also to the President and Council of the Royal Institute of Truro, and to Mr. J. H. 

 Collins for the loan of all the specimens I required from the Penzance and Truro Museums ; to 

 Mr. Etheridge, F.R.S., President of the Geol. Soc. ; to Prof. T. McKenny Hughes; to the Council of the 

 Geol. Soc. of Edinburgh ; to Mr. Peach, Major Wyatt-Edgell, Mr. Linford, and others. 



