THE DEVONIAN ROCKS OF ILFRACOMBE AND 
BARNSTAPLE.* 
BY THE KEY. W. HUNT PAINTER. 
Before proceeding to give an account of what I saw last summer, 
in the neighbourhood of Ilfracombe and Barnstaple, of the Geology 
of North Devon, it may not be amiss if I say a few words respecting 
the controversy concerning the geology of this part of England 
which took place a few years since. 
In 1886 Sedgwick and Murchison described the existence in 
Devonshire of a series of rocks containing fossils of an intermediate 
character between those occurring in the Silurian system and of 
those of the Carboniferous Limestone. This was done with the 
assistance of Mr. Lonsdale in all the palaeontological part of the 
question, in which the argument chiefly lay. On this and certain 
stratigraphical grounds, it was considered that these rocks of North 
Devon are the equivalents of the Old Red Sandstone of the centre 
of England and of Scotland, and, the name Devonian being applied 
to them, the terms Devonian and Old Red Sandstone are generally 
considered as equivalents in point of time. 
According to the late Professor Jukes, the lowest strata of the 
Barnstaple Bay district in North Devon consisted of Red Sand¬ 
stones and Conglomerates, similar to those of the Old Red Sand¬ 
stone of Ireland, and not unlike those of the Mendip Hills. This, 
taken in connection with the resemblance of the overlying strata in 
the lower Carboniferous rocks of the South of Ireland, led him to 
consider the chief part of the Devonian rocks of Devonshire to be 
of Carboniferous age. To this conclusion he was led partly on 
stratigraphical and partly on palaeontological considerations. Thus 
he separated the rocks of this district into two series—that of the 
Old Red Sandstone and that of the Carboniferous series. 
This division appears in a geological map of Great Britain pub¬ 
lished about the year 1860, by the Geological Survey, under the 
direction of Sir R. Murchison, now in my possession. In this map 
* Read before the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopical Society, 
October 18th, 1892. Since revised by the author. 
April, 1893. 
