152 The Irish Naturalist, 



portion of a Turrit clla terebra, and myself with a rounded and 

 chalky shell fragment pronounced by Mr. R. D. Darbishire, F.G.S., 

 to whom all the shells were submitted, to be a portion of a Mya ; 

 also some extremely minute but indeterminable shell fragments. 

 A specimen of the finer material of the esker was mechanically 

 analysed ; the material proved to be mostly dark and grey 

 limestone, the grains being pretty well rounded. Amongst it 

 were some sponge spicules and two grains having shell-structure. 

 Some pebbles of granite were found in the gravel at this end. 

 We walked along the top of the esker, and examined other 

 gravel-pits, but the material appeared to be very barren, and 

 the granite seemed to be absent. At the northern end the 

 gravel and loam is seen to be horizontally bedded, and at one 

 part a deposit that might be called boulder-clay occurred. 



A story is nothing without a moral, and a geological paper 

 without conclusions. The phenomena described ranged well 

 with most of the observations of high and low-level drift it has 

 been my good fortune to see. It supplements some of the 

 defective portions of the story as told in deposits elsewhere, 

 and strengthens other conclusions. It appears to me to lend 

 no support to the Irish Sea Glacier hypothesis. The general 

 drift of the materials has been from the north-west, and they 

 have been swept from the limestone plain far on to the granite 

 mountains. The major part of the granite debris is doubtless 

 from the Wicklow Mountains, and some of this has travelled 

 north on to the limestone. Granite from the Mourne Moun- 

 tains and from Newry are, I believe, found in the drift, but I had 

 neither time nor the requisite local petrological knowledge to 

 follow up this part of the problem. Triassic rock from the 

 North I have already recorded. Professors Cole and Sollas have 

 found the Ailsa Craig riebeckite in the drift as far south as 

 Greystones. Flints from Antrim are common. There is a com- 

 mingling of rocks here, as in the drifts of England and Wales, 

 but not perhaps from so great a base-line. The whole of the 

 phenomena in my judgment points to submergence. This is 

 not the place to appraise the relative value of the facts recorded, 

 but those who wish to pursue the subject further on the lines 

 here sketched out may be referred to the article in Natural 

 Sciefice, 1 on high-level shelly sands and gravels in which I have 

 discussed some of the questions from several points of view. 



^ol. iii. (Dec. 1893.) 



