448 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
The rocks composing the horns of the bay, from Hope's Nose to Tor- Abbey 
Sands on the north, and from Berry Head to Goodrington Sands on the south, 
are slates and limestones. The former differ much in colour, texture, and fine- 
ness of material, and frequently pass into shale. As a whole the limestones 
overlie the slates; they are sometimes schistose, and are not unfrequently 
coarse and impure. Both the rocks are subject to divisional planes of various 
kinds, not fewer than three distinct and definite systems of joints are recog- 
nizable, whilst fine and varied examples of cleavage are numerous. 
In many cases the limestone strata are strangely contorted, being bent, in 
more than a few instances, into folds too sharp for the ridge-tiles of the roof of 
a house, and plunging from top to bottom of cliffs a hundred and fifty feet in 
height. Though these contortions manifest a certain, perhaps a considerable, 
degree of plasticity, yet the numerous fractures which a careful scrutiny 
detects, especially where the folds are sharpest, are so many proofs that the 
rock was not incapable of breaking at the time of the contortion. Both the 
slates and limestones are fossiliferous, and belong to the Devonian system. 
The central shores of the bay, from Tor Abbey to Goodrington sands inclu- 
sive, are made up of red sandstone and conglomerates of probably lower 
Triassic age. The red rocks do not appear to have suffered so much from 
mechanical violence as the slates and limestones; nevertheless, joints are by 
no means rare in them, nor are they exempt from faults. False or diagonal 
stratification occurs in some of the beds, being chiefly seen in the sandstones, 
but sometimes met with in the finer conglomerates also. 
As might have been expected, the sandstones and conglomerates have yielded 
more than the other rocks to the destructive agency of the sea ; indeed, they 
have so rapidly retreated before it as considerably to change the outline of the 
coast, and deprive the proprietors of the soil of much valuable land within 
the memory of many persons still living. Men who have scarcely completed 
half a century, speak of having ridden, when far advanced in their teens, from 
Torquay to Paignton, by a road that has been totally impassable for many 
years, and of which the merest fragments, " few and far between," at present 
exist ; useful only as proofs of the rapid inroads of the sea. One of these 
remnants crosses the low headland known as the Carbons, which separates Tor 
Abbey Sands and Livermead Sands ; it is two hundred and eighty feet in 
length, and at its lowest or northern end, twelve feet above the present strand. 
The coast-line has retreated to about a hundred and fifty feet within it, or 
landward; not, however, to find a resting-place there, except through the skil- 
ful and laborious services of the engineers of the Torbay and Dartmouth turn- 
pike and railroad. 
Fig. 1.— Map of Coast of Torbay. 
