38 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



Dr. Cane, in the absence of the writer, read a paper by the Rev. James Graves— 



ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE COUNTY OF KILKENNY. 



H There are certain subjects, ignorance on which is, by universal consent, held 

 to be deplorable if not shameful ; and the character of the age we live in tends 

 every day to the enlargement of the limits within which ignorance is a disgrace. In 

 the olden times of chivalry, learning was so little deemed essential to the knightly 

 character, that the noble actually boasted of his incapacity to read or write, deeming 

 all such effeminate acquirements only the fitting concern of the churchman, whose 

 profession debarred him from the great business of war. Now, however, things have 

 taken a turn tout au contraire ; the circles of science are rapidly widening, and fields 

 of knowledge, but lately held the peculiar demesnes of the professor, are cultivated 

 by the many. Natural history, geology, and chemistry have been made part of an 

 academical education, and drawing and music bid fair soon to be as essential to the 

 educated classes as correct grammar or orthography. 



u These observations must plead my excuse for bespeaking your attention to the 

 geology of our county of Kilkenny ; and I am pleased to believe, that to many of my 

 hearers the language of the geologist is not an unknown tongue. Nature's great 

 bard, Shakspeare, who seems to have anticipated nearly all the grand discoveries of 

 science, found l sermons in stones ;' and sublime, indeed, are the records from 

 which the student of geology derives his knowledge. As he humbly and reverently 

 reads the world's history in the rocky strata, which form the leaves of this great 

 volume, his mind expands ; he finds himself capable of forming ideas of duration, 

 of power, and of all-planning design, which lead him to the contemplation of the 

 Everlasting — the Almighty — the Omnipotent Creator. [Mr. Graves here entered 

 into a detailed description of the classification and nomenclature of rocks, as given 

 by Colonel Portlock, in his useful "Rudimentary Treatise on Geology ;" and then 

 proceeded as follows, to apply the subject to the geology of the county of Kil- 

 kenny] : — 



"The plutonic rocks are found in small patches to the south-east of the county, in 

 the form of granite. Granite forms the core of Brandon hill, over Graigue-na- 

 managh, which has evidently been protruded from below, through the sedimentary 

 strata which rest against its sides ; these sedimentary rocks have been again re- acted 

 on by this plutonic agency, and in many places have, in consequence, assumed the 

 metamorphic character ; the greater portion of the southern tract of our county is 

 composed of the older sedimentary sand-stones, clay-slates, and brecchias ; 

 the boundary line of this formation extends from the neighbourhood of 

 Graigue-na-managh round by Thomastown, by Knocktopher, and Kilmoganny, 

 to Garryricken, near Slieve-na-man. These formations contain many useful 

 building stones ; as, for instance, the granite, and many of the sand-stones. Its mill- 

 stone grits are worked at Drumdowney hill, and near Waterford ; whilst it likewise 

 affords fine roofing slates from the quarries on the estate of our noble president, the 

 Marquis of Ormonde, near Carrick-on-Suir, worked by our fellow-townsman, Alex- 

 ander Colles, Esq. In the opening address, which I had the honour to deliver at the 

 commencement of our last session, I alluded to the recent discovery of several mag- 

 nificent fossil ferns, fruits, and fish, in the sandstone strata of Kiltorkan hill, which 

 excited so much attention amongst the scientific men assembled in Belfast, in 1852, 

 when the British Association held their annual congress there. These fossils 

 present the most highly organised examples of animal and vegetable life, as yet 

 found, in these very ancient sedimentary strata. The magnificence of the fronds of 

 fern, only equalled in the present vegetation of the world by tree ferns of Australia, 

 and to which, by the way, they are botanically related, may be imagined, when I 

 tell you, that I have seen a slab of the Kiltorkan sandstone, in the Museum of 

 Economic Geology, in Stephen's-green, Dublin, nearly three feet square, and yet 

 only containing a portion of a single fern -leaf. 



*' The mountain limestone, another, but very early sedimentary rock, occupies the 

 remainder of the county of Kilkenny, or that portion lying north-west of the line I 

 have already indicated as bounding the sandstone, and older sedimentary rocks. 

 The limestone has been raised or canted upwards by a force acting in a northerly 

 direction from below upwards ; by this means the edges of the strata have been 



