2 »6 [Pr°c. B.N.F.C, 



p.m. train to Moira, and a walk of about two miles in a north- 

 easterly direction from the station brought the party to the fine 

 chalk quarries near the village of Maghaberry. These quarries are 

 in Dr. Hume's " Southern Division " of the Cretaceous strata 

 which, as he has pointed out, is characterised by the frequency of 

 paramoudras and by the existence of a conglomeratic chalk at the 

 base of the white limestone. 



It was in this neighbourhood that Dean Buckland first met 

 with paramoudras as stepping stones in a river, and it was from 

 Moira that a very perfect specimen was sent to the Ashmolean 

 Museum. Buckland rightly conjectured that these curious bodies 

 were fossil sponges, and Professor Sollas regards them as the 

 cretaceous representatives of the recent sponge Polerion patera. 

 He has consequently named them P. cretaceum. 



Three quarries were visited by the Geological Section on 

 this excursion. At the first one the conductor pointed out that, 

 although the junction was not visible, the chalk here overlay the 

 triassic marls directly. This quarry showed about fifty feet of 

 hard white chalk, with horizontal bands of flint, an average 

 interval of nearly two feet separating the lower bands. At one 

 corner of the section a vertical series of three paramoudras in situ 

 was noted. Resting on the chalk, there was about thirty feet of 

 rudely-columnar basalt, surmounted by from 8 to 12 feet of red 

 boulder clay. The conductor pointed out an erratic of Ailsa 

 Craig riebeckite-eurite, measuring 12 inches by 7, the largest 

 specimen of this rock yet found in our boulder clays. Erratics of 

 granite, probably from Slieve Gallion, and an undetermined 

 gabbro, were also noted. At the entrance to the quarry a large 

 dyke of decomposed basalt about 40 feet wide was observed 

 traversing the chalk, which in its vicinity was greatly altered, and 

 the colour of the flints changed to a deep red. 



In the second quarry boulder clay varying from 2 to 20 feet 

 in depth was found resting directly on the chalk. Many very fine 

 specimens of paramoudras were noted ; one in situ measured 50 



