Vol. 6$.~] ORIGIN OF THE PLATEAUS AROUND TORQUAY. 113 



for a distance of more than 8 miles in a north-and-south direction, 

 which would be at right angles to the general course of a river 

 running from, west to east. 



Prom Mr. Beid's latest remark on the subject, it is clear that he 

 expects to find that 



"a chain of outliers of the Bagshot river-gravels will connect the Eocene of 

 Dorset with that of Bovey Tracey in Devon.' l 



Mr. H. B. Woodward holds a modified form of this view, regard- 

 ing the upland plateaus of East Devon 



' as belonging mainly to a plain of subaerial erosion that had been intersected 

 by the Eocene river and its tributaries (referred to by Mr. Reid).' 2 



It seems to me very improbable that any traces of an early 

 Eocene river-valley with its gravels should exist at the present 

 time in Devon, because all such traces must surely have been 

 obliterated by the advance of the waters in which the Bournemouth 

 Beds were formed. The Bagshot gravels of Dorset pass eastward 

 beneath the sands and pipe-clays of these beds ; similar white sands 

 and clays are associated with the patches of gravel in East Devon ; 

 and finally w T e find gravels passing beneath similar beds in the 

 Bovey basin. Hence I should infer that the Bournemouth Beds 

 originally covered the whole area from one end to the other in a 

 broad sheet, and consequently that all the gravelly material which 

 had been carried eastward by brooks and rivers in early Eocene 

 times was re-arranged and spread out under the waters of the 

 lakes and lagoons which seem to have been formed in front of the 

 advancing Eocene sea, as the wide plain gradually sank below the 

 sea-level of the period. 



If, therefore, the Haldon Gravel is of Eocene age and occupied 

 its present relative position in Eocene time, I contend that it 

 must have formed part of a widespread deposit which extended 

 from Dorset to the borders of Dartmoor, and that it rested on a 

 continuous plane of erosion which had a gentle easterly slope. I 

 have, in fact, formulated the same view in a previous paper. 3 Further, 

 if the Haldon Gravel was continuous with the gravels which pass 

 beneath the sands and clays of the Bovey basin, 4 we have proof that 

 the Eocene planation had cut down through the Cretaceous and 



1 Summary of Progress of the Geol. Surv. for 1900 (1901) p. 122. 



2 Proc. Geol. Assoc, vol. xix(1908) p. 330. 



3 ' The Valley of the Teign ' Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. Ix (1904) p. 323. 



4 There is more evidence of connexion between the Haldon and the Newton 

 gravels than would appear from tbe earlier hand-eoloured copies of the 

 Geological-Survey map (Sheet 339) ; for, owing to mistakes in the colouring 

 (since rectified), three patches of gravelly material were coloured as igneous 

 rock and two others as Culm-measures. All these patches lie on tbe mass of 

 Devonian limestone wbich occupies the ground north-east of Kingsteignton, 

 and they gradually ascend a slope from a level of 100 feet above O.D. to one 

 of 340 feet, beyond which is another patch at about 365 feet, and, lastly, one 

 which touches the 400-foot contour. In this way we carry the area of the 

 Bovey deposits to within a mile of the Haldon plateau, although this extension 

 is still 300 feet below the border of the gravel on Little Haldon. 



