526 Ohituary — Sir Richard John Griffith, Bart. 



ago he walked over the Dingle Mountains with a party of young 

 men, yet Sir Eichard, then over 70 years of age, was as active as the 

 youngest, and endured a pitiless downpour of rain in his swallow- 

 tail coat perfectly unconcerned." 



" Like Sir William Logan in Canada, wherever Sir Eichard 

 Griffith went he made friends, and these, throughout the whole of 

 Ireland, served as an army of amateur helpers, who supplied him 

 with information as to rocks and fossils. He had a wonderful 

 memory for names and places, and could describe minutely each 

 quarry and section in any given locality, long years after he had 

 visited it." 



" More than half a century has passed away since Griffith com- 

 menced his Geological Map of Ireland. At that time there were no 

 Ordnance Survey sheets to use as a basis on which to lay down his 

 geological work, as bit by bit he made it out and pieced it together. 

 The existing maps were very incorrect, and they had to be corrected, 

 or maps had even to be made, before they could be used, 



" One striking feature about the work is that it is all the result of 

 his own personal observations, and none of it was done by guess- 

 work, yet it was all done before a railway existed, and when even 

 good roads were rarely to be met with. 



" The period now called Palseozoic had then but three divisions — 

 the centre was ' Old Eed Sandstone,' below which all the rocks were 

 called ' Transition,' or ' Grey wacke,' and those above ' Carboniferous.' " 



[Sir Eichard Griffith is said to have doubted the propriety of re- 

 taining the so-called " Old Eed Sandstone " series as a separate 

 formation in Ireland, believing it to be made up partly of rocks of 

 Silurian age, and partly of those of the Carboniferous period. 

 However this may be (whether in deference to the opinion of other 

 eminent geologists, or partly as his own conviction), he certainly 

 retained the Old Eed Sandstone formation on his map. 



He refers with evident confidence to his successful sub-division of 

 the Irish Carboniferous system into a seven-fold series, five belonging 

 to the Carboniferous Limestone, and two to the Coal (Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc. 1854, vol. x. p. xxi.),] 



" The tracts which Griffith believed to be Silurian, although coloured 

 as Old Eed Sandstone, are the mountainous area about Fintona (Cos. 

 Tyrone and Fermanagh), the rocks of the Curlew Mountains (Cos. 

 Sligo and Eoscommon), and the Slieve Moyle rocks (Co. Mayo). 

 Subsequently when Du-Noyer found plants in the Silurians of West 

 Cork, which were pronounced by Salter to be allied to Carboniferous 

 forms, Griffith still adhered to his opinion, and said : ' The plants 

 may be Carboniferous, but the rocks are Silurian.' Plants allied to 

 Carboniferous forms have since been found both by American and 

 Continental geologists in rocks of known Silurian age, so that in all 

 probability Griffith was correct. 



'' When the late Dr. Oldham had proved the existence of Cambrian 

 rocks in Dubhn, Wicklow, and Wexford, Sir Eichard Griffith stated 

 that rocks of the same age existed in Donegal and Galway. The 

 Donegal rocks have still to be worked out, but as regards Galway 



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