Alfred Bell — Molluscan Deposits of Wexford, etc. 165 



Mountains, the limestone drifts 'and shelly clays of Ireland from 

 Ballybrack Bay to Glenarm, and the stony or boulder clays of 

 Cheshire and Lancashire. 



In 1835 and 1836, when the study of glacial geology was in its 

 infancy, Sir Richard (then Mr.) Griffith called attention to the marl 

 beds in Wexford, " some of the shells appearing to correspond with 

 those of the (English) Crag" — probably referring to a Purpura 

 and Neptunea contraria. The gravel or marl he thought might 

 possibly be of Norfolk Crag age, the shelly raised beaches of Ireland 

 elsewhere being in his opinion distinctly newer. 



In 1838 Edward Forbes figured a shell in the Malacologia Monensis 

 found by him in the Isle of Man on the sea-shore, which his friend 

 Hugh Strickland afterwards described as Fusus Forbesii. Forbes 

 seems to have collected other shells in the Manx drifts, as in his 

 well-known memoir of 1846 on the Fauna and Flora of the British 

 Isles he mentions thirteen, including Nassa pliocena, JV. monensis, and 

 Fusus Falricii. 



In the same memoir he dealt also with the fossils found by Captain 

 James in the neighbourhood of "Wexford, of which he names about 

 seventy species, including a number of extinct Pliocene or southern 

 forms, as well as others of a distinctly northern facies, the whole 

 suggesting to him "the probability of a communication southwards 

 of the glacial sea, and a sea inhabited by a fauna more southern in 

 character than that now existing" in the district. He says also on p. 44, 

 " It can scarcely be doubted that during the newer Pliocene epoch 

 there was a communication open between the Mediterranean and 

 Northern Seas." He again alluded to the subject in 1859 in the 

 Natural History of the European Seas, where on p. 114 he says, 

 " I still stand by these opinions." 



The next notice of the Wexford shells was in the lists published 

 by myself in the Reports of the British Association for. 1888 and 1890. 1 

 Somewhat later the Manxland fauna was dealt with by Professor 

 Kendall (Glacial Geology of the Isle of Man, 1894) and by 

 Mr. Lamplugh in the Survey memoir of the island (1903), their lists 

 including all the species that had been recognized from that region. 



More lately Mr. F. W. Harmer, examining the Rev. S. N. 

 Harrison's collections of Manxland fossils, as well as that at the 

 Jermyn Street Museum, discovered some other species of the older 

 type, which he described, and figured in his recent work on the 

 Pliocene Mollusca of Great Britain, 2, giving a list of twenty-two shells 

 which he considers may represent a pre-Pleistocene fauna. 



From personal acquaintance with both localities, and a fairly 

 exhaustive one of the western faunas generally, I am led to the 

 opinion that the Wexford and Manx beds form portions of a deposit 

 older than that assigned to the great Irish Sea glacier, a view that 

 has not been generally entertained. The only mainland molluscan 

 fauna that can be tentatively collated with the Wexford-Manx 

 Series is the one originally described by the late Mr. R. S. Darbishire 3 



1 pp. 43, 410. 



2 Palasont. Soc, 1914, p. 123. 



3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxx, p. 38, 1874. 



