Wkight and Muff — Pre-glacial Raised Beach. 251 



the shores of the Harbour. It was at once recognised that a wider 

 investigation was desirable, and we employed our leisure in visit- 

 ing various points on the south coast at which the conditions 

 seemed promising for the preservation of the beach. 



The action of the land-ice on the coast from Clonakilty to 

 Carnsore Point has been comparatively feeble ; and where recent 

 marine erosion has not proceeded too far, the beach is in conse- 

 quence well preserved. West of Clonakilty, however, we get too 

 near the Kerry and West Cork centre of dispersion of the land- 

 ice for such preservation to be possible. The rock-shelf of the 

 beach can, however, be traced as far as Baltimore, this being the 

 most westerly point at which search was made for it. 



Although never properly investigated, the deposits in question 

 did not remain entirely unnoticed by former geologists. In the 

 Geological Survey Memoir, on Sheets 185 and 186, published in 

 1861, Jukes has a brief but accurate account of the head and raised- 

 beach gravels. On the 6-inch working sheet, No. 99, County Cork, 

 he has a sketch of the section at Bingabella, shown in PL XXVII., 

 and the note, " Small raised sea beach about 8 or 10 feet above 

 ordinary high- water mark." The sections at Ballymadder Point, 

 County Wexford have already been described by Mr. G. H. 

 Kinahan in the Geological Survey Memoir on Sheet 181. 



2. GlACIATION. 



It is now widely recognised that a large portion of Ireland 

 was, during the Glacial Period, covered by an ice-cap, which 

 had its centre of dispersion somewhere in the neighbourhood of 

 Fermanagh. The ice moved from this centre in a south-easterly 

 direction over Cavan, Meath, Dublin, and Kildare to the east coast. 

 This stream seems to have divided into two on the north-westerly 

 flank of the Wicklow Mountains. The westerly branch went 

 south through Kildare and Queen's County, and merged with the 

 stream which passed over Kilkenny into Waterford, where the 

 striae indicate ice-motion from north to south out to sea. The 

 easterly branch was deflected south near Kingstown, and helped 

 to swell the ice which moved in a southerly direction along the 

 coast of Wicklow and Wexford. The cause of this deflection was 

 the existence, in the basin of the Irish Sea, of a more or less inde- 



SCIENT. PHOC. R.D.S., VOL. X., PART II. X 



