Frof. Cole & T. Hallissy—The Wexford Gravels. 503 



All three types of drift appear in a 35 ft. section at Crosstowu, 

 on the left bank of the Slaney, 1 mile N.JST.W. of the town of 

 Wexford. Here the chocolate clay rests on a limestone rock-floor 

 and is overlain by about 6 feet of coarse shelly gravel followed by 

 fine stratified sand, on the top of which repose about 6 feet of non- 

 calcareous stony loam. Both the chocolate clay and the sands and 

 gravels, but notably the latter, contain such considerable quantities 

 of coal that borings or other trials for coal are said to have been 

 made at this locality, though without success. As Griffith pointed 

 out,' some of this coal is lignite, like that of Co. Antrim ; but a large 

 amount of bituminous coal, and also of anthracite, occurs. Two and 

 a half miles to the north-east of the Crosstown section, at Pollregan, 

 near Castlebridge, is the sand-pit referred to by A. Bell in the second 

 report to the British Association on the "Manure Gravels of 

 Wexford".- The pit, yielding good building sand and containing 

 numerous shell-fragments, is situated on a low gravel ridge rising 

 from the general level of the 'marl', which bounds it on every side 

 on the lower ground. Although the stratigraphical relations of the 

 gravel to the other drifts cannot be seen in the actual pit-section, it 

 is fairly safe to infer from its position tiiat it overlies the marl. The 

 superficial drift is absent, at least from the side of the ridge on which 

 the gravel-pit occurs. 



Another section studied by Bell is that of Little Clonard, about 

 2 miles W.S.W. of the town of Wexford. The gravel-pit at this 

 locality yielded many well-preserved shells, and these, as well as the 

 shells from the gravels of neighbouring districts, included some forms 

 of late Pliocene age. This fact led A. Bell to refer the deposit to the 

 same horizon as the St. Erth Beds, which he considers to be a south- 

 eastern extension of the Wexford Gravels. Since he believed the 

 ' marl ' to be newer than the gravels, he described the latter as 

 occurring beneath the ' marl ' in this section. A careful examination 

 of the section, however, shows that the gravel rests on the ' marl ', 

 and is overlain by the non-calcareous stony loam (Upper Boulder- 

 clay), just as in the cliff-section at Crosstown. 



The gravels are also well developed at The Deeps, near Killurin. 

 In a new pit at this locality fine and coarse stratified sands are seen 

 resting on the 'marl' as before, and capped by a couple of feet 

 of soil representing the non-calcareous loam of other districts. 

 Magnificent sections of these deposits are exposed for about 4 miles 

 along the coast from Bosslare to Ballytrent, south of Greenore Point, 

 and on the southern coast from Kilmore Quay to Tacumshin Lake. 

 Perpendicular cliffs of drift up to 60 feet in height, which are being 

 rapidly eroded by the sea, are seen in the neighbourhood of Greenore 

 Point. The great bulk of the deposit consists of chocolate clay 

 containing numerous beautifully glaciated boulders, fragmentary 

 shells, coal, flint, jasper, chalk, etc., and at one point it is seen to 

 rest on a glaciated rock-surface with striae bearing N. 47° E. At 

 other places along this coast the clay overlies a few feet of local 



1 See James, Journ. Geol. See. Dublin, vol. iii, p. 196, 1846. 



2 Eep. Brit. Assoc, 1888, p. 134. 



