2 mb. e. a. xewele abber ox the upper [Feb. 1907, 



the present communication an account is given of more recent and 

 concluding observations. It has been thought well to add some 

 brief reference to the main conclusions which have appeared else- 

 where,, in order to treat of the whole area under discussion in as 

 connected a manner as possible. 



In a previous paper x a description was given of the fossil plants 

 obtained from the district around Bideford, the geology of which is 

 well known and has been repeatedly described. 2 The present paper 

 is. in the main, concerned with a much wider area. As the result 

 of a close search for plant-remains in the Upper Carboniferous 

 rocks lying to the south and west of Bideford, and extending into 

 Xorth Cornwall, other discoveries have been made incidental to the 

 progress of the main line of enquiry. These, although strictly 

 lying beyond my province, I have felt it my duty to record, 

 if only imperfectly, since the district has not hitherto been 

 examined. Thus, in addition to the plant-evidence. I have 

 endeavoured to add some account of the physical characters of the 

 beds, as well as of the invertebrate fossils which have been dis- 

 covered incidentally. In so doing I make no pretence to an 

 exhaustive study of these rocks, either from a penological or 

 from a palseontologieal standpoint. lEuch remains to be done 

 which can only be successfully accomplished by specialists in 

 these branches. 



The Upper Carboniferous rocks of Devon have been regarded 

 as almost entirely barren. This conclusion is not, however, 

 strictly accurate. Even in the district with which we are here 

 more especially concerned, where fossils of any description are 

 certainly scanty, their rarity is not so great as has been supposed. 

 In the Bideford area plant-remains are fairly common, although of 

 local distribution. The Bideford rocks were examined, first because 

 the only carbonaceous material to be found in the Upper Carboni- 

 ferous sequence in Devon — the impure, smutty coal, known locally 

 as ' culm ' — is there developed ; and experience has shown that, 

 with very rare exceptions, it is only bordering on such deposits that 

 plant-remains can be obtained in a state of preservation sufficiently 

 perfect to admit of determination. 



It was afterwards thought desirable to extend the search for 

 plant-remains to higher beds, occupying roughly the central portion 

 of the basin, and cropping out on the coast, both to the east and 

 to the south of Hartland Point. Owing to the fact that inland, 

 artificial sections in this sparsely-populated district are few, and 

 that such as exist are quite inadequate as a collecting-ground for 

 fossil plants, I naturally turned my attention to the magnificent and 

 continuous natural section of the coast-line. The field-work thus 

 resolved itself into a detailed examination of the cliffs forming the 

 western boundary of the Upper Carboniferous rocks in West Devon 

 and North Cornwall. 



1 Arber (04). 



a Sedgwick & Murchison (40). De la Beche (39), and Ussher (92). 



