128 Prof. E. Hull— Reply to Mr. Kinahan. 



I shall now touch briefly upon his points seriatim, as stated in his 

 "Note in Press " (p. 73), which seem, to call for reply. 



First. — Mr. Kinahan says : " If this he allowed " (i.e. the Silurian 

 age of the Dingle and Glengarriff Grits in which " all Irish geologists 

 who have studied thern agree"), "we have a vast continuous series of 

 rocks which represents all the time intervening between the accu- 

 mulation of the typical Silurian (beds) of Dingle and the typical 

 Carboniferous (beds) of Cork." 1 



This is a remarkable statement in the face of the fact — that in the 

 Dingle Promontory there exists between the "Upper Silurian " Dingle 

 beds and the Old tied Sandstone (and consequently the overlying 

 Carboniferous beds) an unconformity scarcely exceeded in amount 

 by that between any two sets of rocks in the British Islands — by 

 which the Old Eed Sandstone rests on beds in some places 12,000 or 

 15,000 feet higher or lower than in others. If this is Mr. Kinahan's 

 idea of a " continuous series " representing all the time between the 

 Silurian and Carboniferous, his notions are special and peculiar. In 

 my paper (Geol. Mag. Nov. 1878) I suggested that this great gap 

 in the Irish series is filled up by the Marine Devonian beds of Ilfra- 

 combe and Mortehoe — a suggestion which seems to bring the Irish 

 beds into remarkable harmony with the Devonshire series. 



Mr. Kinahan next attempts to commit me to the following 

 absurdity. Because certain plant-remains (which I have seen) are 

 stated on somewhat doubtful authority to have been found in the 

 Glengarriff Grits south of Dingle Bay — and are also " said by Baily " 

 to be found at Kiltorcan in the Upper Old Eed Sandstone — there- 

 fore he supposes I have stated that the Glengarriff Grits are at one 

 place Upper Silurian, and at another Old Bed Sandstone ! 



This process of reasoning, besides being a little amusing, involves 

 several postulates which I do not admit. 



First, from the appearance of the plant-remains found in Kerry, 

 I strongly suspect they have been got out of the Lower Carbonifer- 

 ous Slate and Coomhola Grit Series rather than out of the Glengarriff 

 beds. If Mr. Kinahan had been a little more candid, he would 

 have admitted that when we examined these plant-remains the 

 other day in this Office, great doubts were expressed by others, as 

 well as by myself, of their having been found in the Glengarriff 

 Grit Series at all. 



I also distinctly deny the supposed conformity in the sense of con- 

 tinuity of the Carboniferous and Upper Old Bed to the Glengarriff 

 Grit Series ; and of this I hope to give sufficient proof in a paper 

 now in the hands of the Secretary of the Geological Society of 

 London, but not yet brought before the Society. On the contrary ; 

 the wide lapse of geological time represented by the great dis- 

 cordance in the beds north of Dingle Bay is represented also by at 

 least as great a break in continuity south of Dingle Bay — where the 

 Lower Carboniferous Slates and Grits come directly in contact with 

 the Glengarriff Grit Series (as at Kenmare, Sneem, Glengarriff, etc.), 

 without the intervention of the true Old Bed Sandstone of Dingle, 

 1 The italics are Mr. Kinahan's own. 



