Vol. 6$.] ORIGIN OF THE PLATEAUS AROUND TORQUAY. 121 



of the same date and that they were in some way connected with 

 one another. 



I am consequently led to believe that the Brixham and Stoke- 

 Gabriel plateau is another portion of the basal platform of the 

 Eocene system, and to suggest that it marks a second shallow 

 flexure or undulation formed at the same time as the Bovey and 

 Aller basins. Its axis seems to run very nearly east and west, so 

 that, if the two flexures were contemporaneous, they would have 

 met and merged into one another in the land-area which then 

 stretched far to the east of Torbay. If this view be correct, the 

 intervening anticline must have passed over Paignton, and will 

 have ' nosed out ' in the Torbay area east of that town (see 

 map, fig. 6, p. 120). The present features of the country are quite 

 in harmony with this supposition, for on the west and north-west of 

 Paignton there is a semicircle of hills which rise to 500 feet and in 

 one place to over 600 feet above the sea. 



The meeting and union of two synclinal flexures would lead to 

 the production of a broad flattened-out area at their meeting-place, 

 and will account for the Torquay and Brixham plateaus being 

 inclined one towards the other. It will also explain incidentally 

 the origin of the depression which has become Torbay : for, if the 

 site of Torbay was a broad plain depressed by flexure to a lower 

 level than the surrounding country, it would be a tract where the 

 sub-Eocene surface of older rocks descended to a lower level than 

 at any other part of the line which has become the eastern coast of 

 Devon. Consequently, after the Eocene deposits had been stripped 

 off by the long-continued action of subaerial agencies, and when the 

 final subsidence of the country took place in Pleistocene time, the 

 sea would find comparatively-low land lying on each side of a 

 central river-valley, which valley and its branches would be 

 gradually widened and eventually converted into the present broad 

 and sheltered bay. 



Discussion. 



Mr. Barrow drew attention to the importance of the paper, as it 

 dealt with the occurrence of one of the plateau-features that have 

 been observed over a very wide area, at varying heights, and which 

 must be of various ages. The speaker had noted them in Britanny, 

 Cornwall, and South Wales. The first formation of these plateau- 

 features began after the completion of the great earth-movements 

 that affected the Carboniferous rocks, but how much of this earliest 

 plateau is now left, and to what extent it has since been modified, 

 is not yet known. Similar features have been developed at 

 intervals down to at least Pliocene times, and in many cases it is 

 extremely difficult to fix the exact age of isolated remnants of these 

 plateaus. In some cases they have been covered by later deposits, 

 and valleys were cut through this newer material and down into 

 the older Devonian rocks upon which it rested. Later, this newer 

 material has been swept away and the plateau-feature redeveloped: 



Q. J. G. S. No. 250. k 



