V.—The Fossils Found on the Site of the Torquay Museum

Extract

The fossils which form the subject of this notice were obtained from the slates exposed in the excavations for the foundations of the “Pengelly” Lecture Hall, which was added to the Museum of the Torquay Natural History Society in 1894. They were collected by Mr. W. J. Else, the late Curator of the Museum, and were examined by the late Rev. G. F. Whidborne, who published some account of them in the Geological Magazine for 1901, p. 533.

When Mr. Whidborne's paper was published I was not specially interested in the details of the geological structure of Torquay, but since then I have paid much attention to these local details and have collected fossils from all existing exposures. I was consequently surprised to find on reference to the note published by Mr. Whidborne that he had regarded these fossils as a Lower Devonian assemblage, in spite of the fact that the Museum is in close contiguity to a tract of Middle Devonian Limestone, as shown on the map of the Geological Survey published in 1898. Moreover, he quoted a statement made by the late Mr. A. Somervail regarding the stratigraphical position of the slates which is entirely incorrect. It is not true that in ascending the Torwood valley from The Strand one passes over a descending series of rocks. The beds underlying The Strand are shaly slates, which dip northward under limestone, and the same slates run up the valley to and a little beyond the Museum; they are then succeeded by limestone which crosses the valley in a south-east direction, and about 100 yards higher up this is faulted against slates which are believed to be of Lower Devonian age.