ON THE MIOCENE FLORA, ETC. 163 



In working the iron ores of this district there are other localities where 

 beds of lignite and plant-remains have been observed, but none of them 

 up to the present have been found to be anything like so rich in the 

 remains of a fossil flora of so decided a character as the place just de- 

 scribed, although it would be highly desirable to investigate occasionally 

 places where similar excavations are being carried on. 



The existence of another very interesting fossil plant locality, evidently 

 of the same age, near Glenarm, was kindly communicated to me by Mr. 

 William Gray, who was good enough to accompany me from Belfast to 

 Glenarm, where, notwithstanding the severity of the weather (and it was 

 snowing hard at the time), we succeeded in obtaining a good number of 

 specimens ; the material in which they are embedded, a light grey, 

 laminated marl, being lithologically quite different from that of Bally- 

 palady, although identical species occur at both localities. 



On the east shore of Lough Neagh, at Sandy Bay, and in the bed of 

 Glenavy l'iver, near the same place, in drift deposits and in loose water- 

 worn masses, the celebrated silicified wood is found ; it is for the most 

 part coniferous, 1 the structure being beautifully preserved, exhibiting the 

 typical characters of the Cupressinse, or cypress group. The silicifi cation 

 in all probability was caused by water holding silica in solution, although 

 not by the water of Lough Neagh. The popular idea that the waters of 

 this lake possessed petrifying properties has been satisfactorily shown to 

 be fabulous, and that the lake itself in all probability did not exist at the 

 period when this silicification took place. 



Accompanying the silicified wood on the shores of Lough Neagh are 

 also water- worn pebbles of fine granulated iron, which, on being broken, 

 disclose the impressions of plants, amongst them a fern, Hemitelites, twigs 

 of Sequoia Couttsice, and leaves of dicotyledonous trees in beautiful preser- 

 vation. Where a fresh fracture has been made, the finely reticulated 

 structure of the leaf is shown, and in the Sequoia the woody character of 

 the twig, apparently unchanged, is preserved in the cavities made by its 

 impression in the ironstone. 



Up to the present time I have been enabled to enumerate at least 

 twenty- five species from these Miocene deposits of the North of Ireland. 

 They are as a group most closely allied to the fossil flora of North Green- 

 land (described by Professor Heer in the ' Philosophical Transactions,' 

 1869). Some of them are certainly identical, such as Sequoia Gouttsim, 

 (Heer), occurring at Bovey Tracey, shores of the Baltic, and North 

 Greenland ; Pliragmites OEningensis (Ad. Brong) , the well-marked leaves 

 doubtfully referred by Heer to the family Menispermacese, and named by 

 him McGlintockia Lyalli ; and M. trinervis, the fruits or seeds of Nyssa 

 ornithobroma and Viburnum Whymperi, together with a leaf of the latter 

 species ; also leaves of Alnus, closely allied if not identical with A. Kefer- 

 steini ; Platanus Guillehnce, and Juglans acuminata. It is also interesting 

 to be able to identify a fern which I believe belongs to Heer's genus 

 Hemitelites, species of which occurs at Bovey Tracey and North Green- 



1 Dr. Scouler, in the first volume of the Journ. Gaol. Soc. of Dublin, shows, from 

 the evidence of Dr. Lindley, that these masses of wood were coniferous. The Rev. 

 Dr. Macloskie, in a paper read at the Belfast Natural History Society, February 14, 

 1872, stated that they belong to the Cupressacese, and probably to the genus Sequoia, 

 a coniferous tree (of which the great Wellingtonia of California is a living example, 

 there being but two existing species, Sequoia sempervirens and S. gigantea, both 

 natives of California) frequent in the Miocene of the Antrim basalt, and also in the 

 accompanying ironstone nodules. 



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