CHAP. xiv. MAMMALIA SCARCE IN IRISH DRIFT. 271 



to floating ice, during submergence. The signs of glacial 

 action have been traced by Professor Jukes to elevations 

 of 2,500 feet in the Killarney district, and to great heights 

 in other mountainous regions ; but marine shells have rarely 

 been met with higher than 600 feet above the sea, and that 

 chiefly in gravel, clay and sand in Wicklow and Wexford. 

 They are so rare in the drift east of the Wicklow mountains, 

 that an exception to the rule, lately observed at Ballymore 

 Eustace, by Professor Jukes, is considered as a fact of no small 

 geological interest. The wide extent of drift of the same 

 character, spread over large areas in Ireland, shows that the 

 whole island was, in some part of the glacial period, an archi 

 pelago, as represented in the maps, figs. 39, 40, pp. 276 

 and 278. 



Speaking of the Wexford drift, the late Professor E. Forbes 

 states that Sir H. James found in it, together with many of 

 the usual glacial shells, several species which are characteristic 

 of the crag; among others the reversed variety of Fusus 

 antiquuSy called F. contrarius, and the extinct species 

 Nucula Cobboldice, and Turritella incrassata.* Perhaps a 

 portion of this drift of the south of Ireland may belong to 

 the close of the newer pliocene period, and may be of a some 

 what older date than the shells of the Clyde, alluded to at 

 p. 231. They may also correspond still more nearly in age 

 with the fauna of the uppermost strata of the Norwich Crag, 

 occurring at Chillesford, and alluded to p. 199. 



The scarcity of mammalian remains in the Irish drift 

 favours the theory of its marine origin. In the superficial 

 deposits of the whole island, I have only met with three 

 recorded examples of the mammoth, one in the south near 

 Dungarvan, where the bones of Elephas primigenius, two 

 species of bear (Ursus Arctos, and Ursus spelceus?), the 



* Forbes' Memoirs of Survey, &c., vol. i. p. 377. 



