1890-91.] 265 



first took their steps to the large quarry close to Magheramorne 

 station, whence limestone is shipped to Glasgow and other 

 British ports. The white Chalk with flints is here quarried 

 in two levels, making altogether a thickness of considerably 

 over a hundred feet. Its surface, as seen in the upper quarry, 

 is very uneven, having evidently formed at one time an 

 ancient land surface, the hollows of which are now filled with 

 rolled flints, covered with a layer of volcanic basalt, as usual 

 in the district. The basalt, in turn, has its coating of the 

 glacial epoch, but in this case the ordinary yellow Boulder Clay 

 is only about four or five feet thick, and between it and the 

 basalt is a partially stratified bed of brown gravel, apparently an 

 interglacial deposit local in its character. The Boulder Clay, 

 gravel, and basalt all thin out rapidly to the northward, and 

 have evidently been subjected to a powerful denuding agency 

 coming from that direction. After witnessing from a safe 

 distance the firing of several "shots," the party returned to the 

 shore, and crossed in a capacious ferryboat to the opposite side. 

 The route was then taken along the flat beach towards Barney's 

 Point. The numerous boulders, relics of the ice age, made 

 walking in some places a little difficult, but the fringe of 

 stranded Zostera marina which marked the extreme limit of 

 the highest spring tides formed a strip of soft carpet easy to 

 the feet. The pursuit of some moth or butterfly, or speculation 

 upon some wave- or ice-borne lump of quartz or conglomerate, 

 passed the time till the point was reached, a place well known 

 amongst local geologists as one of the best outcrops of the 

 Lias. The tide was unfortunately too high to allow access to 

 the more fossiliferous beds, but a careful search amongst the 

 gravel of the upper part of the beach was rewarded by a 

 number of characteristic fossils, including several small, but 

 nearly perfect ammonites, and the fragments of many of a 

 large size. An examination of the sand at high-water mark 

 showed also many minute shells, spines of echinoderms, &c, 

 of Liassic age. Striking inland from here, the party returned 

 towards Lame by the road, which skirts a narrow deep valley 



