THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, 



[THIRD SERIES.] 

 No. 5. MAY 1858. 



XXVII. — On a new Fossil Cirripede. 

 By James Mac Adam, Esq., F.G.S. 



For several years I have been collecting fossils from the creta- 

 ceous formation of the county of Antrim, and my collection is 

 now tolerably extensive, so that I purpose ere long to publish a 

 catalogue of it. This formation extends from the southern to 

 the northern end of the county, and its basseting edges may be 

 easily examined, — in some places near the sea-coast, in others at 

 a short distance from it. It may be well seen in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of Belfast, from which town to Larne the beds 

 are very interesting, and have furnished me with great numbers 

 of organic remains. At different times I had obtained some 

 fossil Cirripedes, but they are by no means of common occur- 

 rence. On examining them lately, I distinguished one of a 

 very remarkable shape, which I had found last autumn, near the 

 promontory called Black Head, at the northern extremity of 

 Belfast Lough. The upper beds of the cretaceous formation are 

 a hard w^hite chalk with flints ; this graduates into an impure 

 chalk, speckled with particles of greensand ; going lower, there 

 is sometimes a kind of sandstone like the firestone of the English 

 upper greensand, sometimes a greenish marl ; the lowest bed is 

 a soft, pure greensand. The Cirripedes which I have collected 

 were all from the lower beds. I have not as yet found any in 

 the pure overlying chalk. The specimen which I last procured 

 I showed to Professor Wyville Thomson, of Queen^s College, 

 Belfast, who was struck with its resemblance to the Loricula 

 described by Mr. Darwin in his Monograph published by the 

 Palseontographical Society. Professor Thomson most obligingly 

 offered to make a strict examination of the specimen for me, and 

 this he has accomplished in the most satisfactory manner. He 

 Ann. ^ Mag, N, Hist, Ser. 3. Voli, 21 



