136  PROCEEDINGS  OE  THE  GEOLOGICAL  SOCIETY.  [May  1 893, 
slopes  of  the  Palaeozoic  mountain-region  of  Damnonia.  In  most 
English  districts  this  class  of  rock  is  of  Permian  age,  though 
of  course  the  great  angular  blocks  that  have  a  similar  origin 
may  find  a  resting-place  in  strata  of  any  age,  if  we  take  the  whole 
world  into  consideration.  But  there  are  several  reasons  why  the' 
basal  breccias  of  South  Devon  are  more  likely  to  be  Permian  than 
Triassic  :  among  others,  the  occurrence  of  contemporaneous  volcanic 
material  incidentally  shown  by  Mr.  Worth,  and  insisted  on  by  Sir 
Archibald  Geikie  in  his  last  Presidential  Address.  What  I  particu¬ 
larly  wish  to  emphasize  just  now  is  the  fact  that  Murchison,  as 
pointed  out  in  the  same  Address,  thoroughly  endorsed  the  views  of 
Buckland  and  Conybeare  as  to  the  resemblance  of  the  Heavitree 
conglomerate  to  the  German  Bothliegende.  This  appears  to  have 
been  the  original  view  of  the  older  geologists,  and  one  can  only 
express  surprise  that  the  opinions  of  Murchison,  as  Director- 
General  of  the  Geological  Survey,  were  not  allowed  to  have  more 
weight  in  deciding  this  matter. 
Let  us  now  return  to  the  Devon  Coast-section,  for  the  purpose  of 
considering  Dr.  Irving’s  first  paper  on  the  Bed  Bock  Series.  He 
thought  that  at  the  base  of  the  Budleigh  Salterton  pebble-bed  there 
is  a  physical  break  of  as  much  significance  as  that  between  the 
Trias  and  the  Permian  of  the  Midlands.  From  the  pebble-bed  east¬ 
wards  the  Triassic  system  is  represented  by  a  series  of  rocks  quite 
comparable  with  the  Bunter  and  Keuper  of  the  Midlands,  and  of 
these  rocks  he  proceeded  to  give  an  account.  In  the  marls  which 
underlie  the  Budleigh  Salterton  pebble-bed  he  recognized  the  equi¬ 
valents  of  the  Permian  Marls  of  Warwickshire  and  Nottinghamshire. 
These  pass  by  gradual  transition  through  sandstones,  becoming  more 
and  more  brecciated,  into  the  great  brecciated  series  of  Dawlish 
and  Teignmouth,  which  were  regarded  as  the  equivalents  of  the 
great  Permian  breccias  of  the  West  of  England  and  elsewhere. 
Prof.  Hull  believes  with  Dr.  Irving  that  the  Bed  Bocks  of 
Devonshire  are  representatives  of  the  Permian  and  Trias  which 
occupy  so  large  a  portion  of  the  district  bordering  Wales  and  Salop, 
and  which  extend  into  the  Midland  counties.  He  thinks  also  that 
the  breccia  forming  the  base  of  the  series  is  a  representative  of  the 
Lower  Permian  division.  But,  in  the  first  instance,  he  differed 
from  Dr.  Irving  in  assigning  the  red  sandstones  and  marls  of 
Exmouth  to  the  Trias  and  not  to  the  Permian,  as  that  Author  has 
done.  He  (Prof.  Hull)  compared  them  with  the  Lower  Bed  and 
Mottled  Sandstones,  and  regarded  the  marls  as  a  local  divergence 
