The Rev. D. Williams on the Geology of Devon Sf Cornwall. 63 



of South Devon, is to me unaccountable, because they are all 

 manifestly of the same age and order with the Chudleigh 

 limestones, viewed stratigraphically, zoologically, or mine- 

 ralogically, and are seen under precisely the same associations, 

 for I do not remember a single exception to the fact of the 

 floriferous, Coddon grit, and killas, being either interstratified 

 with, or underlying and overlying them : so that nothing can 

 be predicated of the Chudleigh, that may not equally be 

 affirmed of the coral limestones everywhere, if the parallel 

 ridges immediately north and south of Chudleigh be the 

 same floriferous, No* 9, and to doubt it is to doubt the 

 plainest evidence of the senses: the controversy is at an end, 

 for we trace them here continuously, from the culm-field; 

 and I ask any fair and indifferent geologist merely to com- 

 pare the rocks on the right bank of the Teign near Chudleigh- 

 bridge, with those on the left, where a cutting for the road to 

 Newton affords a good section of the west extremity of the 

 Ugbrook ridge ; and if he does not pronounce their perfect 

 identity, the same dull olive-coloured sandstones parted by 

 the same black shales, I will no longer advocate what I know 

 to be the truth, and allow error to maintain the ascendant. 

 No one doubts that chalk is chalk, or oolite oolite, or lias lias, 

 elsewhere I The Chudleigh reef of limestones, which is lost 

 under Haldon to the eastward, and cuts out near the Teign 

 to the west, is a great alternation between the two floriferous 

 ridges just mentioned, the three sequents dipping together at 

 about the same. angle to the south; while a careful examina- 

 tion of the coral limestones shows them to be based here im- 

 mediately upon thick black culmy beds, and higher up to be 

 parted by Cornish killas, beds of Coddon Hill grit and vol- 

 canic ash, with jplanLs. The Creator has been so explicit 

 here, that his works cannot be misinterpreted, if the laws re- 

 corded on these tables of stone be read without prejudice or 

 control. 



On discovering in the month of May last, at Doddiscomb 

 Leigh, five miles north of Chudleigh, the Posidonia lime- 

 stones (as everywhere else), included in the Coddon Hill grits, 

 and together constituting; the anticlinal axis of the south bor- 

 der of the trough to the east of Dartmoor (thus manifestly 

 underlying the Chudleigh series, a fact confirmed by good 

 cuttings and natural sections along the west bank of the 

 Teign) the scales fell from my eyes — every difficulty and ap- 

 parent anomaly vanished as if by magic, and the structure of 

 the entire region, from one channel to the other, was pre- 

 sented to my mind's eye in all the grandeur of its simplicity ; 

 from Plymouth to Linton it was a simple series of successive 



