106 PEOCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



formation. Near Cookstown, in Tyrone, there are beds of Red Sand- 

 stone near the base of this group, and beds of red limestone, both of 

 which contain fossils common in the mountain limestone. There is now 

 in the Museum of Irish Industry, at Stephen' s-green, Dublin, collected 

 by Colonel Portlock, from the river at Kildress, from Red Sandstone in 

 the very lower beds of this group — 



Productus fimbriatus, 



,, semireticulatus, 



„ Martini, 

 Leptaena crenistria, 

 ,, Sharpei, 

 -nine species ; all common in the limestone. 



Spirifer laevicosta, 

 Retzia ferita, 

 Rhynconella ventilabrum, 

 Cnathopsis fungites, 



In beds of red limestone, at Castle Espie, in the county of Down, 

 which occur in the lowest beds of the Old Red Sandstone, there are — 



Actinoceras giganteum, Orthis cylindrica, 



and some- species of Rhynconellidae, common in the mountain limestone. 

 Professor Haughton of Trinity College, has in his Museum the fol- 

 lowing fossils, got in whitish-brown sandstone, near the top of the Old 

 Red, at Porter's Gate, Hook Point, "Wexford — 



Productus caperatus. 

 „ setosus. 



concinnus. 



Leptaena crenistria. 

 Lithodomus dactyloides. 

 Sanguinolites sulcatus. 



These are all common in the mountain limestone and in the Carbo- 

 niferous Slate. 



Besides the foregoing, which are in pure sandstone rock, there are 

 others got in shale and limestone beds, which are interstratified with 

 the yellow part of the sandstone near the top, and in this shale are 

 found fifty or sixty species of the common fossils of the Carboniferous 

 Limestone at Porter's Gate, near Hook Point, and in many other places. 



I look upon those fossils got in the Old Red Sandstone — some of 

 them in the bottom beds of it at Kildress and at Castle Espie, some in 

 the middle at Kildress also, and some in the upper part at Hook Point, 

 in "Wexford — as a link made by Nature to tie this Old Red Sandstone 

 group up into the Carboniferous formation; and this fossil evidence, 

 together with the physical considerations before mentioned, to be con- 

 clusive as to the propriety of leaving the Old Red Sandstone according 

 to the arrangement in which it stood twenty years ago ; and, further, I 

 consider the modern mutilation of cutting away this Old Red Sandstone 

 with its conglomerate base, parallel beds, and fossils, from the Carbo- 

 niferous formation, into which it is tied by nature, as I have described, 

 and joining it to a rock which belongs to an older epoch in the Earth's 

 history, and calling the two distinct things by one name, as has been 

 recently done, as a most injurious infringement on proper classification, 

 and calculated to retard the progress of the science. 



The Carboniferous system has thus suffered by recent changes. The 



