TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 95 
vertical dykes ; some of which dykes lead up through the cap itself, possibly to higher 
flows, which have since been denuded away. These are all well seen in a number of 
quarries which have been opened along the sides of the hill; which show, however, 
SN the Sandstone beds have not been displaced, except near the margin of the 
dolerite. 
Passing over the top of Scrabo Hill, the same succession of beds are met with, 
down to the Silurian rocks, occupying the high ground between it and Belfast Lough ; 
and at Cultra near Holywood the Lower Limestone, the Permian, and the Bunter 
beds are again crossed over. 
Tn conclusion, the author referred to the question whether coal will be found in the 
neighbourhood of Newtownards or Scrabo Hill, where borings had been carried on 
for some time past. 
From the one-inch map it was shown that the New Red Sandstone, along almost 
its entire margin, rested directly on the Silurian beds, at Castle Espie on the 
Lower Limestone, and that at Cultra the Permian beds rested directly on the 
Lower Limestone. 
Now is it the least probable that if the Coal-measures did exist hereabouts that 
we should have been unable to find any trace of their outcrop along this entire line 
of junction of the New Red Sandstone and underlying rocks ? Though they probably 
may have existed, they all disappeared with the great denudation which took place 
before the deposition of the New Red Sandstone. Another evidence against the 
presence of the Coal-measures is, that the Permian beds near Moira rest directly on 
the Silurian rocks. 
Additional evidence is to be found in the borings which were made towards the 
end of the last century in this district ; and in every case where the New Red Sand- 
stone was pierced through, the Silurian rocks were met with; some of these borings 
were made to a depth of 240 feet. 
Of the borings lately made in this district, none were carried sufficiently deep to 
prove what existed underneath. It is to be regretted that one, sunk at Cherry valley, 
north of Castle Espie, was stopped at a depth of about 120 feet, without penetrating 
the New Red Sandstone, as the author considered that within 20 or 30 feet more the 
underlying rock would have been entered, and proved whether the limestone ex- 
tended even that far to the northward under the New Red Sandstone, to which 
distance he hardly thought it did. 
From these and numerous other considerations the author believed that now no 
Coal-measures exist in this locality, and that he was justified in excluding them from 
@ position on the geological section across Scrabo Hall, and that thus the co. Down 
was deprived of the hope of obtaining coal. 
Physics of the Internal Earth. By Dr. Vavewan. 
On the Discovery of Microzoa in the Chalk-flints of the North of Ireland. 
By Josupn Wrieut, F.GS. 
In consequence of the extreme hardness of the Irish chalk (White Limestone) 
geologists until quite recently had failed to find in these beds any of those Microzoa 
which occur so abundantly in rocks of the same age in England. In 1872 the author 
discovered that the soft powdery material frequently found inside the cavities that are 
so often met with in flint, on being washed and cleaned, yielded Foraminifera, Ostra- 
coda, and sponge-spicula in abundance, this powder being, in fact, a portion of the 
old sea-hottom of the Cretaceous times. The flints when newly quarried are usually 
hard and compact throughout, and it requires exposure to the action of the weather 
to change the limestone frequently occurring into the powdery material. 
Nearly all the Workiitneeea and Ostracoda examined chemically by the author 
are siliceous; in a few instances the interior casts of the Foraminifera have alone 
been changed, the shell having remained calcareous. He has since examined perso- 
nally a large portion of the chalk-area of the north of Ireland, and has seen examples 
of chalk powder from 35 different localities in the counties of Antrim, London- 
