A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



It is not improbable that river ice may have assisted in this work 

 of denudation and transport and even have aided during the closing stages 

 of the elevation in the processes of excavation. 



The Head on the coast and the fluviatile Head is often seen to pass 

 into the detrital infillings of valley bottoms ; of this there are good 

 examples in the Bolt district, between the Start and Prawle, and in 

 the deposit near Gawton Mine. The insulated pinnacles of coast Head 

 near Peartree Point, on the old beach reef, face two of these valleys. 

 At Venericks Cove (between the Prawle and Salcombe estuary) and on 

 Ivy Island (Revelstoke coast) there are insulated patches of Head on the 

 old beach reef. The relics of Head adhering to the cliffs in positions 

 where no modern talus could rest testify at once to the antiquity of the 

 accumulation and to the denudation it has undergone. 



The Head of the Bovey valley contains here and there ' patches of 

 fine potter's clay in which the clay diggers occasionally meet with 

 stumps and roots of trees, the latter so ramifying as to indicate that they 

 are in situ ; in addition to these remains leaves have occasionally been 

 met with, from which the dwarf birch {Betula nana) and three species 

 of willow {Salix cinerea, S. repens, S. amygdalind) have been determined. 

 These plants betoken a climate much colder than that which at present 

 obtains in Devonshire.' ' Underlying the clay, which in one of the 

 sections was lo feet thick and under 9 feet of unfossiliferous clay 

 and sand, 1 3 feet of sandy clay with angular and subangular stones was 

 encountered. 



The term ' Head' does not postulate more than the inclusion of the 

 deposits to which it is applied in the same general period, in which 

 the land attained its maximum elevation and began to subside. Of 

 the vegetation of this period the dwarf birch and willows of the Bovey 

 Head are the earliest examples of which we have evidence, the submerged 

 forest traces are the latest. 



Submerged Forests. — Between Saunton Down and the mouth of the 

 Taw estuary Claypole* observed Scrobicularia clay in which roots and 

 rootlets were locally plentiful, projecting through the sands above low 

 water mark. 



Outside the south end of Northam Pebble Ridge for 200 yards 

 along the shore, nearly as far out as low water, EUis^ found peat with 

 prostrate boughs and trunks of birch, alder and oak mixed with roots and 

 acorns on a band, a few inches thick, of closely packed broken Culm grit 

 pebbles upon blue clay. In the Exeter Museum the Westward Ho 

 forest is described as peat 2 feet on — blue clay submerged 23 feet at high 

 water, containing remains of wild boar, goat, long-fronted ox, wolf, roe- 

 buck, red deer, and bones of birds and fishes, 2 feet thick on — a kitchen 

 midden, a dark line of mould containing numerous flints all of Paleo- 

 lithic types, split bones, leg bones of ox and red deer, bits of pottery, a 



• Pengelly, Presidential Address, Trans. Devon Assoc, for 1867 ; Phil. Trans, vol. clii. p. 1019. 

 ' Claypole, Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc. vol. vii. pt. i. p. 16. 



* Ellis, Trans. Devon Assoc, for 1866, p. 80 



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