I20 The Irish Naturalist. [April, 1896. 



Geologry of the Curran, Larne. — On the 12th December, 1895, 

 Miss S. Thompson, Mr. R. Bell, and the writer visited the new bauxite 

 works at Larne, to investigate the report that some of their foundations 

 were sunk below the lower beds of the estuarine clays and gravels ex- 

 amined and reported upon by a Committee of the Field Club during the 

 Session 1889- 90. This report we found misleading. The new siding to 

 the works has been cut through, and the works themselves have been 

 built, mainly upon a raised bank of boulder clay about 300 yards north- 

 west of the Larne Harbour railway station. The boulder clay is of a 

 particularly hard, stiff nature, full of large and beautifully striated and 

 polished boulders mostly of basalt, and is covered by a layer of water- 

 rolled pebbles and coarse stratified sand, almost three feet thick, upon 

 which is a natural land surface with trees apparently from 50 to 100 

 years old. The altitude of the surface of this bank is at a somewhat 

 higher level than the beds on the Curran, from which it is separated by 

 the two lines of broad and narrow gauge railway and the public road. 

 Although the pebbles and sand are in all reasonable probability of the 

 same age as the raised beach upon the Curran, yet, owing to the separa- 

 tion mentioned above, their exact continuity cannot be absolutely traced, 

 nor their precise position in the series definitely fixed, though in all 

 probability the boulder clay w'as partly denuded before the gravels were 

 laid down, and the portions of gravels, &c., at the bauxite works re- 

 present the shoreward end of the series, deposited against and partly 

 over the boulder clay. The works are now approaching completion, and 

 no exact record has been kept of the deeper foundations such as the tall 

 chimney for instance, but we saw a pit sunk for part of the machinery, 

 at which place the boulder clay is about 11 ft. to 12 ft. deep. 



A boring for a well is in progress, and has now reached a depth of 130 

 feet. On being interrogated, the workmen regretted that a more accurate 

 record of the strata passed through had not been kept, but they reported 

 verbally as follows, in the order of descent : — 



1. Gravel with shells. 



2. Black cla}' (qy. Lias ?) 



3. Limestone (qy. a boulder ?) 



4. White alabaster and clay. \ 



5. Red clay. Keuper marls. 



6. Blue clay. 1 



We obtained a sample of the boring at 130 feet depth, and it is clearly a 

 portion of the blue Triassic Keuper marl, a clay with gypsum veins. 



From the above noted results we may reasonably infer that the Field 

 Club has had no very serious loss from not having had an earlier oppor- 

 tunity of inspecting the excavations at these works. 



F. W. LoCKwooD, Belfast. 



[Miss Thompson writes that " shells " from the black clay (bed No. 2 

 above) gathered by the workmen, have been sent up by Mr. Close, the 

 architect, and they turn out to be Lias fossils, including fine specimens 

 of Gryph:Ba incurva obtained eight feet down in the black mud : showing 

 that Mr. Lockwood's supposition is correct. — Kds.] 



