[ 61 ] 



III. 



A NEW DEVONIAN ISOPOD FROM KILTOECAN, COUNTY 



KILKENNY. 



By GEORGE H. CARPENTER, B.Sc, Professor of Zoology, and 

 ISAAC SWAIN, B.A., A.R.C.Sc, Assistant in Geology, in the 

 Royal College of Science, Dublin. 



Plate IV. 



Read Aprii 27. Ordered for publication May 13. Published Auglst 21, 1908. 



The fossil described in the present paper was obtained in a quarry, some- 

 what famous in geological literature, situated near the top of Kiltorcan Hill, 

 County Kilkenny, about a mile south-east of Ballyhale railway station, at 

 an elevation of nearly 600 feet above the sea-level. The quarry yields a 

 yellow micaceous sandstone comprising two distinct types which occur in 

 alternating beds — a fine-grained rock that splits readily into thin slabs, and 

 a coarser rock that has an irregular fracture. Both types of rock contain 

 remains of plants, many of which are in a perfect state of preservation — 

 whole fronds of ferns being found in which the venation of the leaves is 

 beautifully shown, thus indicating conditions of deposition suggestive of 

 the wooded margins of a lake. A description of the quarry, with figures 

 of some of its fossils, was given more than forty years ago by Beete-Jukes 

 and Baily (1861); the latter author subsequently (1870) dealt with the 

 fossUs at greater length. 



Geologists agree generally in referring the rocks to the Upper Devonian 

 series, though it is difficult on stratigraphical grounds to determine exactly 

 the horizon of the beds here exposed. The presumed unconformable junction 

 with the Silurian is not to be seen in the locality, and the junction with the 

 Carboniferous strata can only be inferred. But some of the fish-remains 

 found in the coarser layers, about three feet below the surface, are very 

 closely allied to those occurring in rocks of unquestionable Old Red 

 Sandstone age at Altyre in Morayshire, and in the Orkneys. 



Plant- remains are by far the most numerous of the Kiltorcan fossils, 

 the predominating types being Cyclostigma with its spirally arranged leaves, 



i{. I. A. PROC, VOL. XXVII., SECT. B. [L] 



