OUR LIMESTONE NOT CORAL ROCK. 69 
able indeed for the most part in these respects to 
connected rocks, they are remarkably uniform in 
height, they contain also veins of jasper, veins of 
iron, and patches or veins of slate, they have large 
cay ities with generally smooth sides, they include 
shells and other animal remains (quite solid through- 
out) not found in the other rocks, they are blended 
much with the substance of the other rocks, and, 
those isolated beds in slate, or grey dunstone are in 
nearly every case so affected by that circumstance 
as to be of a bastard or intermediate nature.* 
We are now to picture to ourselves a new con- 
dition of the earth after this deposit of “ transition” 
strata, and destruction of primeval creatures and 
vegetables ; the surface now produced for the pre- 
sent in the district now being considered, none of 
those demonstrations of creative power which had 
just passed into the mineral condition but of which 
nevertheless, brighter and more complex instances 
‘were at a future period toappear. But, though the 
passage from simple to complicated creation was 
here abrupt, the interspace of time was filled up by 
a gradual and consecutive development of inte:me- 
diate forms in other situations. Sandstones and 
conglomeratest referrible it is supposed to some 
following convulsion or convulsions, are found 
towards the south-eastern portion of the county, 
and the Bovey coal field in the eastern quarter is 
* At Brixham blocks of lime occur in the body of the slate rock. 
t+ Conglomerate pebbles have indeed been found here, generally 
lying on the shore, or in the shingle of estuaries, (Yealm, Mount 
Edgecumbe, Bigbury Bay, Boveysand, &c.) but, 1 am far from 
convinced of their having been originally formed in this district, 
though I confess they have great resemblance to our own sand- 
stones. Have they not been loosely transported hither? Beds 
of conglomerate occur however as above said to our north-east, 
and likewise in Cornwall. See de la Beche’s Manual, and Boase’s 
Primary Geology. 
