80 
Mr. W. Pengelly on the Red Sandstones, 
on the north of the narrow gorge existing there ; the object being to 
show whether or not there are indications of a " Fault " in the valley. 
The " directions " are entered in degrees, and always from north 
towards south, through east ; the latter being entered as N. 90*^ E., 
whilst south, had it occurred, would have been set down as N. 180° 
E., and so on. This mode has been adopted in order to facilitate 
comparison, as well as the calculation of the Mean. 
In no instance is the inclination very considerable, the greatest 
being 37°. The Means of the amount and direction of the dip are 
about 151° towards N. 68^ E. (mag.), or N. 44^° E. true ; that is 
very nearly the direction of the Flat Point from Goodrington Sands, 
a distance of about 15 miles. 
Now the tangent of 15^° is so that were we to calculate the 
thickness of that portion of the formation which we have been con- 
sidering, from its dip and horizontal extension in the direction of 
inclination, it would amount to fully four miles. That this result 
is vastly beyond the truth there can be no doubt, nevertheless, it 
serves to show that the red rocks of Devonshire contain an enormous 
amount of detrital matter. 
Much of the Conglomerate material is extremely angular, and the 
general character is that of sub -angularity ; so that the beds are 
more correctly Breccias than Conglomerates. Many of the fragments, 
as has been already stated, were derived from the older rocks in the 
immediate neighbourhood, and the angularity is probably a con- 
sequence of this fact ; others, on the contrary, have certainly travelled 
considerable distances, such as the fragments of trap and carbonaceous 
rock, both of which, probably, came from the district west of the 
line extending from Haldon to Exeter, and their angularity is difficult 
to account for ; it is on the whole, however, characteristic of the 
stratified, rather than of the igneous, detritus. 
Again, the trappean masses are not unfrequently of great size. 
The largest probably occur near the mouth of the Teign especially in 
the cliflf between Shaldon and the Ness Point. They are more or 
less ellipsoidal in form, and sometimes measure fully five feet in 
greatest diameter. 
That the same somewhat distant district has sent down blocks of 
rock, very many of which have preserved their angularity and others 
their great volume, are facts which cannot but claim attention ; more 
especially as they have suggested to some geologists a transportation 
by the agency of ice. Though I do not believe that the time has 
arrived when it would be possible to write the thermal history of the 
earth, and though I have no a priori objection to the existence of ice 
in our latitudes in Triassic times, inasmuch as I cannot, in the 
present state of the evidence, subscribe to the doctrine that the tem- 
perature of the earth was higher than at present in all pre-" Glacial " 
times ; nevertheless, there does not appear to be any necessity to call 
in the agency of ice to account for the phenomena just mentioned. 
