Conglomerates, and Marls of Devonsldre. 
23 
at and near Dawlish, where they are termed Pan," or " Iron-pan " 
by the workmen. These plates by no means coincide, as a rule, in 
position or direction, with the planes of stratification. They 
" weather"' less rapidly than the pui-e sandy portions of the beds, 
and, hence, they stand out in relief in the cliff sections, and 
occasionally assume very gi'otesque forms. Before the construction 
of the South Devon Railway, the ''Pan" in many instances 
projected, upwards of a foot, fi'om the Sandstone Cliff between 
Dawlish and the Exe ; and in the recesses thus formed, birds — 
ravens, hawks, choughs, and others — built their nests in great 
numbers. The cliffs w^ere cut back during the railway operations, so 
that the haunts of the birds were destroj-ed. The "Pan" is 
however, again becoming prominent, and may thus furnish a sort 
of measure of the waste of the Sandstone there. 
A few years since, a builder informed me that he had dug five 
wells, at Dawlish, varying in depth from 83 feet to 120 feet ; that 
the deposits were alternately " Iron Sand " and " Soft Sand," the 
former in beds from twenty to thirty feet in thickness, whilst the 
latter, in some instances, did not exceed two or three feet ; that the 
" Iron Sand " was invariably compact, hard and brittle, and bounded 
at the lower surface of the bed by a band of " Pan ; " and that when 
water was found it occurred in all cases immediately below a band 
of this kind, through which it gushed up, in considerable volume, 
from the " Soft Sand " beneath. 
The "Iron Sand" occasionally appears in the form of balls, in 
most cases sensibly spherical but occasionally pyriform ; and 
sometimes a number of them appear in botrj'oidal clusters. They 
vary in dimensions from the size of a man's fist to that of hazel 
nuts ; an inch in diameter is a common size. 
Though the entire formation is termed Red, it must not be 
supposed that this is the only colour it exhibits ; indeed in a few^ 
localities — especially at the Corbons, a small low headland between 
Tor-Abbey and Livermead Sands in Torbay — yellow and other 
light -coloured beds are interstratified with those of a red hue ; 
whilst in some other districts a bed of Sandstone or fine 
Conglomerate suddenly and, as it were, capriciously exchanges its 
prevalent red for yellow, drab, or white. Not unfrequcntly a change 
of this kind is of a very limited vertical, as well as horizontal, 
extension, being confined to a portion of the thickness of a single 
stratum ; occasionally the light- coloured material occupies what 
appear to be sun-cracks in a red stratum, thereby assuming the 
appearance of a course of masonry composed of red bricks, which 
have been recently " pointed up " with whitish cement. 
On the whole the Red Sandstones are a bright brick red, the 
Conglomerates have a dark-puiT)lish tinge, and the Marls present a 
dull earthy chocolate aspect. So general are these distinctions that 
D 
