A MEMOlfl OP ROBEET ETHERIDGE, F.R.S. 185 
in 1866. Jukes, while then admitting that there appeared 
to be a regular ascending succession of rock-groups from 
Lynton to Barnstaple, felt compelled to dispute the reality 
of this order, and to maintain that there was either a 
concealed anticline with an inversion to the north, or that 
the strata were repeated by an extensive fault with a 
downthrow to the north. To combat these views was the 
task set to Robert Etheridge in the autumn of the same 
year, and in March of the following year (1867) he had 
prepared the defence. At the outset he felt the work 
before him to be almost overwhelming ; but he was a man 
of indomitable energy and great activity. In the end he 
mapped out the main divisions of the rocks ; he gathered 
all the help he could from the long- continued researches 
of local observers ; he listed and tabulated all the known 
fossils, giving their range in time and distribution in this 
country and on the continent ; and finally he maintained 
that the Devonian system, as a whole, was chronologically 
the same as the Old Red Sandstone. 
Although the main contention of Etheridge has been 
generally accepted, there is yet a great deal to be done in 
reference to the classification of the rocks in Devonshire. 
As remarked by Sir A. Geikie, “ Jukes did a great service 
by boldly attacking it and bringing to bear upon it all his 
long experience in the south of Ireland, which gave him an 
advantage possessed at the time by hardly any one else.” ^ 
During subsequent researches. Dr. Henry Hicks found 
fossils in the Morte Slates which had previously been 
thought to be unfossiliferous, and these he regarded as 
Upper Silurian and Lower Devonian. This discovery 
renewed the controversy on the succession of the strata, 
and although Etheridge disputed the identification of the 
fossils, yet other authorities were of opinion that the 
fauna was of Lower Devonian if not of Silurian age, and 
^ Life of Sir Roderick I. Mutxhison, vol. ii. 1875, p. 328. 
