Notes on the Structure of the Palæozoic Districts of West Somerset

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Abstract
I n the following account of traverses made during the past antumn across some of the classical ground of West Somerset and its confines, we do not aim at any extensive alteration in principle of the work wrought by the master hand of De la Beche, and given to the scientific world forty years ago. Notwithstanding the encyclopædic paper of Mr. Etheridge†, wherein both the physical and palæontological relations of the North-Devon rocks are so ably worked out, instances of unbelief will occur where ocular evidence is wanting, prompted perhaps by a hankering after the apparently simple version of the structure of North Devon put forward by the late lamented Prof. Jukes‡. Although the ground has been carefully gone over in Mr. Etheridge's paper, such a confirmation of his views as the infilling of minor stratigraphical details affords may not be altogether unworthy of attention. The classification which De la Boche‚s unequalled description of the North-Devon rocks suggests was put into form by the la'te Prof. Phillips, who, however, included the unfossiliferous grits and slates of Piekwell Down with the slates of Mortehoe as one division §. Although these divisions were similarly treated by Mr. Hall in 1865 and 1867 ∥, a more detailed description mitigated an error of classification which that gentleman has since abandoned.:Mr. Hall informed us that the term Pickwell-Down Sandstone was applied to that division by Prof. Jukes, acting on his suggestion. To Mr. Hall belongs the credit of inaugurating the present more complete classification, which rightly

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