Praeger — On the Raised Beaches of N.E. Ireland. 39 



Cerithium reticidatum. H. G. Purpura lapillus. G. Sp. P. 



Natica species. Sp. Buccinum undatum. H. G. Sp. 

 Naua reticulata. H. G. Sp. P. 



N. pygmma. G. Fusus antiquus. H. 



The molluscan fauna of the gravels is yet by no means thoroughly 

 •worked out. Mr. Joseph "Wright has recorded^ sixty species of Forami- 

 nifera from these gravels. 



Such full descriptions of the Curran beds have been published in 

 the Papers already referred to, that it is only necessary to summarize 

 that at their place of greatest development they consist of current- 

 bedded gravels, twenty-one feet in thickness, containing marine shells 

 and worked flints from top to base, and resting on estuarine clay, the 

 surface of which is at high water level. The vertical position of 

 certain bivalves proves that they lived buried in the gravels while the 

 deposit was accumulating. This, and the bedding, show that the 

 deposit is an old inter-tidal, or submarine, bank. Sections on different 

 parts of the Curran vary greatly. On the south side of the railway, 

 close to the Curran station, was seen the succession just mentioned. 

 A hundi'ed yards northward a bank of boulder-clay rises up, till there 

 is only two feet of gravel on the top of it= In pits at the old pottery, 

 six feet of gravels overlay the estuarine clay, the surface of which 

 was here six feet above high water. In a ten-foot-deep trench, made 

 in 1887 for the Larne outfall sewer, along the road which crosses 

 the Curran near this old pottery, a good section was exposed, as in 

 Plate I., fig. 3, which shows the beds actually seen in the cutting 

 from the old pottery to the eastern shore. The thick bed of yellow 

 sand, which at this place suddenly intervenes between the gravels 

 and the estuarine clay, contained many shells. In the ten minutes 

 at my disposal on the day when I saw the cutting, the following 

 were noted : — 



Anomia ephippiiim. v. r, Zucina horealis. \. r. 



Ostrea edulis. c. Fectunculus glycymeris. c. 



Pecten varius. v. r. Cardium edule. c. 



P. maximus. f. Venus exoleta, c. 



Montacuta bidentata. f. V. fasciata, t. 



1 " Post- Tertiary Foraminifera of X.-E. Ireland," Proc. B. X. F. C, 1879- 

 80, Appendix. 



