i88o-i88i.] 51 



Rector of Maghera, it is in a pretty good state of preservation. 

 At the close of the paper remarks were made by the Rev. Canon 

 Grainger, D.D., and the president, on the care now exercised by 

 the Board of Works over our ancient monuments. 



Mr. S. A. Stewart then proceeded to read a paper on " The 

 Boulder Clay of the north-east of Ireland." In opening, he 

 stated that it has only been of late years that the Boulder Clay 

 has been at all studied, and that because it is even yet mis- 

 understood by many geologists, he thought he was justified in 

 bringing the subject under the notice of the Belfast Naturalists' 

 Club. The older geologists had either known nothing of the 

 deposit, or, if they did, their knowledge was extremely limited, 

 and their ideas as to its origin and importance very vague. 

 General Portlock was the first in Ireland who discriminated the 

 Boulder Clay from other deposits of Post Pliocene age. By him 

 it was termed calcareous clay, and truly defined as characterised 

 by the presence of Nucula oblonga — a bivalve shell not now 

 living in British waters. It was to be regretted that succeeding 

 writers have not emulated even the moderate amount of pre- 

 cision that was possible to Portlock, and that when treating of 

 superficial deposits containing shells, they usually have not 

 attempted to refer these to their proper class, or else they classify 

 them erroneously. Quotations were given from the report of 

 the British Association meeting in Belfast in 1852, and from the 

 Memoirs explanatory of sheets 38 and 39 of the Geological 

 Survey maps, to show that shell-bearing beds of various age 

 and origin are indiscriminately lumped together. The reader 

 next referred to the error into which Mr. Hardman had fallen 

 when he announced the finding of a clay bed of Pliocene age, 

 and fresh water origin, on the banks of the Crumlin River. 

 This bed of clay had been investigated by Mr. Swanston, Hon. 

 Sec. of the Club, and it had been clearly shown by him that the 

 bed in question was a true marine Boulder Clay. Mr. Hardman 

 is no more correct when he refers to the summit of Divis 

 Mountain, and describes it as marked by faint glacial striae, when 

 in fact the summit is so covered by bog and heath that no 



