14 
BOVEY HEATHFIELD BASIN. 
which, Porphyry , and some other rocks probably 
equally entitled to be viewed as modifications of 
granite, have been detected in their appearances at 
the surface, at several points southward of the great 
granitic tract. 
Around Dartmoor then, or rather between it and 
the other points of its appearance, repose various 
strata, or deposits occupying a lap, or hollow, de¬ 
signed as it were for their reception, and from even 
this one circumstance of its several re-appearances, 
it seems easy to gather the idea of granite consti¬ 
tuting the inferior member of our rocks, whereon 
the other kinds are received. 
Viewing the county therefore as a whole, its 
granitic district is its most elevated portion, and as 
geologists have already remarked, may be regarded 
in some respects as a “ table land,” different 
however from those properly so named, in being 
composed of a vast assemblage of hills, or 
“ undulations gradually overtopping each other.” 
This undulating appearance of its surface, geologists 
of experience have also pronounced to be the 
characteristic of “ primitive chains” throughout 
the world. Added to this one geological evidence, 
the appearance of its surface bestrewed with granite 
blocks, the number, impetuosity and sudden risings 
of its currents, its springs, issuing often on the very 
summits of the highest hills, the character of its 
Fauna and its alpine botany, conspire to place this 
portion of Devonshire in the same light as other 
mountainous tracts of country of which granite is 
the base. 
Notwithstanding however its generally elevated 
position, one inconsiderable space is belozv the sea 
level; this is at Bovey Heathfield, in the eastern 
quarter, where a sort of hollow occurs between an 
irregular circle of granite hills, and occupied by a 
deposit of a peculiar and anomalous description— 
