Conglomerates, and Marls of Devonshire. 
23 
of the "pebble bed," and inhumed in quartzites identical in 
structure and even in hue with the pebbles of South Eastern 
Devonshire. 
In the same month (July, 1864) Mr. Salter, writing on this 
subject, said " this " [the Dodman district] " seems to be the 
counterpart of the Normandy rocks and to contain several of their 
characteristic fossils." ^ Sir E. I. Murchison, however, had long 
before this remarked " that the band of siliceous grits and quart- 
zites in the South of Cornwall presents much of the character and 
aspect of the opposite rocks of Brittany, which the French geolo- 
gists have mapped and described as Lower Silurian. "f 
Here then we have, on each side of the western part of the 
English Channel, contemporary Silurian deposits charged with 
fossils betokening deposition within one and the same ocean basin, 
and which are, not improbably, remnants of a formation which once 
occupied the intermediate portion of the Channel itself ; it is pos- 
sible, therefore, that during the Triassic era fragments travelled to 
the modern Budleigh Salterton district from some portion of this 
mid-channel formation. The direction of transportation certainly 
differed from that of the materials of the older Triassic conglo- 
merates between Torbay and the river Exe, and we have thus an 
indication of some change in, at least, the local physical geography. 
That, during Triassic times, an unobstructed sea lay between 
the Silurian area and south-eastern Devonshire, is proved by the 
fact that rock fragments travelled from one to the other ; but, 
though open, this sea was necessarily shallow, for it is not consis- 
tent with what we know of the transporting power of water, to 
suppose that large stones could have been conveyed through depths 
equal to those which now exist in that part of the channel which 
is under consideration, and which exceed thirty fathoms. Moreove) 
since the " pebble bed " rises from the sea level to heights of a;, 
least eighty fathoms, the channel, had it then existed, must have 
* Gcol. Mag., yxA. i., p. 9. f " Siluria," 3rd edition, p. 160-1, (1859). 
