Prof. T. Sterry: Hunt — On Cambrian and Silurian. 453 



The most recent deposits contain species all living in the present 

 British seas, and form the flats and lower lands at the mouths of 

 most of the rivers and estuaries. They are frequently situated a 

 little above high-water mark. The richest deposits for fossils are 

 the clay and sands upon which the town of Belfast stands, and its 

 immediate vicinity ; and a raised bed, elevated about ten feet above 

 the sea, situated in a hollow of the cliff at Port Rush, Co. Antrim. 

 The fossils from the former of these localities, to the number of 200, 

 have been listed in the Transactions of the Belfast Club by Mr. 

 Stewart, who has briefly described the manner in which the fossils 

 lie. The most remarkable point is the large size which the Fholas 

 crispata attains. I have seen examples measuring nearly five inches 

 in breadth, a size not reached by any recent individual, and only 

 paralleled by those from the Selsey Mud deposit. 



The Port-Eush fossils have been accumulated in a bank similar to 

 those now forming in the Channel Islands, unlike the Belfast shells, 

 which are in their original habitat. Purpurce, Littorince, and Patellcs 

 abound, and the smaller genera, Bissoa, Odostomia, Trochus, etc., 

 exist in countless numbers. 



The shell banks in Lough Foyle must have been accumulating 

 for ages. Materials derived from the banks have been used for 

 manure for many years. As early as 1710 Archdeacon Verschoyle 

 refers to this use of the shells, and in the Geological Report upon 

 Londonderry, etc., 184:3, it is stated that about 60,000 tons were 

 removed yearly from the banks. 



These are, I believe, the principal places in which the fossils of 

 the Irish Post-Tertiary marine are to be studied. 



The equivalents in time of the Wexford beds I think must be 

 found in some part of the older glacial series as defined by Messrs. 

 Wood, Rome, and Harmer. The older Belfast and Dublin Drifts in 

 the lowest of those of the west of England ; Larne and the Turbot 

 bank in the Scottish Clyde and Caithness beds ; and those of the 

 newer Belfast Clays and Port Rush in the Carse and Estuarine Clays 

 bordering the whole of Britain. 



Y. HiSTOKT OF THE NaJIIES CaMBMAN AND SiLURIAN IN GeOLOGY.^ 



Ey Prof. T. Sterry Htjnt, LL.D., F.E.S. 

 [Continued from p. 395.) 

 2. Middle and Lower Cambrian. — Investigations in continental 

 Europe were, meanwhile, preparing the way for a new chapter 

 in the history of the Lower Palaeozoic rocks. A series of 

 sedimentary beds in Sweden and Norv/ay had long been known 

 to abound in singular petrifactions, some of which had been 

 examined by Linn^us, who gave to them the name of Ento- 

 molitlii. They were also studied and described by Wahlenberg 

 and by Brongniart, the latter of whom, from two varieties 

 of the Entomolithns paradoxus, Linn., established in 1822 



1 Eeprinted from the " Canadian Naturalist," new series, vol. vi. no. 3, p. 294. 



