METAMOEPHIC ROCKS OE SOUTH DEVON. 



717 



Prof. Bonney, as running out to sea in the cove just north of a 

 small rocky headland. I was able, owing to a more favourable tide, 

 to skirt this headland for a short distance, and found clear evidence 

 that its northern face, as suggested, " has been determined by the 

 fault." While the mass of the headland is of mica-schist, fragments 

 of what are evidently beds of the slaty series are found coating its 

 northernmost portion. They agree with that series in direction and 

 amount of dip ; and, lithologically, are very like beds occurring at a 

 junction near South Pool, to be described immediately. They con- 

 sist chiefly of impure limestone, very much indurated and crystalline 

 in character, and of brittle bands of blackish material having a very 

 crushed and slickensided look. At a higher level, where the scour 

 of the waves between high and low tide would be stronger, the 

 neck of the headland has been worn away rather more deeply, and 

 exposes down its cliff signs of what I believe is the faulted junction. 



2. West of Salcombe Estuary. — On the western shore of Salcombe 

 estuary, as Prof. Bonney has described, the actual junction is not 

 seen ; but we can easily recognize when, from smooth satiny slates 

 dipping evenly to the west of north at about 55°, we have passed, 

 over a very short interval, on to mica-schist. To the west of this 

 exposure, I noted, in a lane north of Batson, the occurrence of phyl- 

 lites* followed by mica- and chlorite-schists, the junction being rather 

 to the south of the line given on the map, thus agreeing with the 

 position on the estuary suggested by Prof. Bonney. 



3. East of Salcombe Estuary . — On the opposite shore of the estuary 

 I landed at Halwell Wood, and walked southwards by a low cliff, 

 where the phyllites were well exposed, varying somewhat in cha- 

 racter, but all clearly of the unmetamorphosed series, having a dip 

 of about 55° to the west of north. Some bands were fairly good 

 slate, others true phyllite ; while here and there the sheen surface, 

 developed along veined or coarser and more gritty parts, gave an ir- 

 regular schistose look to the beds, which, however, was easily distin- 

 guished as a merely superficial likeness. South of the phyllites, a 

 tiny streamlet comes down to the beach, and the mouth of its slight 

 valley extends about 50 yards with no exposures ; then mica-schist, 

 at first very brown and decomposed, forms the low cliff. 



4. Southward of South Pool. — Along the arm of the estuary which 

 comes down from South Pool, we can again note where the junction of 

 the two series occurs, and we find it some 200 yards south of the line 

 drawn on the Ordnance map. The west shore gives us a continuous 

 section, and, in spite of the ferruginous rotting which has attacked 

 some 75 feet of the rocks, I identified, I believe, both the original 

 phyllites, with hard calcareous bands similar to those which I found 

 at Hope Cove, and also the much altered, but more massive, rhom- 

 boidally-jointed chlorite-schist, which is here the first of the meta- 

 morphic rocks to be met v"h as we go south. On the east shore 

 there is a blank of about 10b yards (partly occupied by a cliff of 

 recent deposit) which separates the phyllites on the north from 



* I use the term phyllite to denote a slate in which a large amount of micro- 

 lithic mica is developed. 



