A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



The cavern accumulations and their fauna were coeval with these 

 Pleistocene changes, and prove the co-existence of man with the extmct 

 mammalia, besides affording evidence of his handiwork in Palasolithic, 

 Neolithic and more recent times. Pengelly records the discovery of 

 bones of Cervus elaphus. Bos longifrons and Elephas primigenius in the Tor- 

 bay submerged forest ; and two molars of E. primigenius, said to have been 

 obtained from the submerged forest at Sidmouth by P. O. Hutchinson, 

 were presented to the Exeter Museum. 



The Exe has the most anomalous course of any of the Devonshire 

 rivers, crossing the softer strata of the Tiverton and Crediton valleys 

 without deflection, and traversing the Culm rocks across their strike 

 between these valleys and on the north of Exeter. When the previous 

 extension of the Lower New Red gravels over this part of the Culm 

 area is taken into account the phenomenon is easily explained. 



Devonshire has a voluminous geological literature commencing with 

 the pages devoted to geology in Polwhele's History of Devonshire (1793- 

 1806), which are well worthy of perusal. 



The general distribution of the older and newer rocks and the 

 extension of the granite were outlined by De la Beche, assisted in south 

 Devon by Godwin-Austen. The results of their gratuitous labours are 

 to be seen amongst the first maps published by the Geological Survey 

 after its establishment in 1835 ; in De la Beche's Report on the Geology of 

 Cornwall, Devon and West Somerset, published in 1839 ; and in 1842 in 

 the article by him in Memoir I. of the Geological Survey. The group- 

 ing of the older rocks into Carboniferous and Devonian was effected by 

 Sedgwick and Murchison in 1838. Amplifying the correlation of 

 Lonsdale, they regarded the Devonian rocks as the marine representatives 

 of the Old Red Sandstone. They gave the name Culm Measures to the 

 Carboniferous rocks, from the local occurrence of seams of culm or 

 anthracite in them in north Devon. In 1837, 1838 and 1841 the 

 Rev. D. Williams, Weaver, and Professor J. Phillips published classifica- 

 tions of the Culm rocks. The succession of the Devonian rocks of 

 north Devon given by De la Beche in his Report, and endorsed by Pro- 

 fessor Phillips, Hall and Etheridge, was disputed by Professor Jukes and 

 Professor Hull, who claimed the uppermost horizons as Carboniferous 

 and the lowermost as Silurian. Dr. Hicks, with the assistance of the 

 Rev. G. F. Whidborne, relying on fossils discovered in what had been 

 regarded as an unfossiliferous subdivision, advocated the faulted upthrust 

 of pre-Devonian rocks in an otherwise unbroken Devonian succession. 



Dr. Holl attempted to decipher the broken structures of the 

 Devonian of south Devon, but more light was thrown upon the problem 

 by Champernowne, who, from careful observations in the field, constructed 

 a detailed map of the area between Chudleigh and Dartmouth. In con- 

 sequence of the acceptance of this map by the Geological Survey, as set 

 forth in the Report of the Director-General for the year 1887, a detailed 

 survey was begun in 1888 on 6-inch maps, during the progress of which 

 the structural relations of the rocks were unravelled by Ussher. 



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