IV.—The late Professor Phillips on the North Devon Rocks; with an Introductory Note

Extract

The Meeting of the British Association at Plymouth has not unnaturally been the means of directing attention to some of the most complex points of Devonshire geology, and of reviving the discussion as to the age and position of the Devonian series in North and South Devon. Mr. Jukes, it will be remembered, died in 1869. Had he lived longer, his energy of purpose would doubtless have led him to carry on the work he had begun, until he could either prove the correctness of his views, or satisfy himself that the generally accepted classification was, after all, the right one. The followers of Jukes seem to confine themselves to those portions only of the district which he had more specially studied—North Somerset, Lynton and Pickwell Down; searching in almost hopeless despair amongst the lower rocks, instead of beginning at the other end of the scale, with the Millstone-grit, and tracing the beds downwards. As a result, the fossiliferous beds of the Upper Devonian have been almost entirely neglected, and their relation to the Carboniferous slates passed over.