XX1V DESCRIPTIVE REMARKS. 
many thousand pounds in the fruitless search for coal, which has in 
several cases been made through these black shales containing Grapto- 
lites, under the impression that they were coal shales with plants.* 
* Mistaken ideas, such as these, which have led to ‘ vain’ trials for coal, have often 
fallen under the notice of the Geological Surveyors. They are alluded to by Professor John 
Phillips, in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey, vol. ii., part i., p. 54, in his account of 
the black shales of the Silurian district of Malvern; and by Mr. J. Beete Jukes, Di- 
rector of the Geological Survey of Ireland, in his address delivered before the Lord 
Lieutenant, at the Museum of Irish Industry, December 21st, 1866. The author also 
has recorded similar mistakes in his ‘notice of Fossil localities near Drogheda,’ read be- 
fore the Geological Society of Dublin, January 12th, 1859 ; as, for instance, at the Com- 
mons of Slane, there are places which are marked on the Ordnance 6-inch Maps as 
coal pits, where fruitless trials have been made through black slates of the Silurian For- 
mation, containing Graptolites, under the impression that they were plants, involving ne- 
cessarily the same barren results and loss of capital. 
