328 Wright — Cretaceous Foraminifera of Keady Hill. 



of two kinds— (1) Ordinary flints in amorphous masses, and usually lying in 

 Lands parallel with the bedding of the chalk, and having the longer axis in the 

 plane of the bedding ; (2) Paramoudras (in England known as potstones), 

 usually of an irregular fusiform contour, variable in shape, and having a core of 

 white limestone passing through them from end to end ; they always occur in 

 an upright position, or at right angles to the plane of the bedding, being the 

 reverse of the position in which the other flints are found. 



Most of the ordinary flints are of a homogenous, silicious structure through- 

 out, others have incorporated with them a white limestone, and some a mealy 

 powder. This material in flints freshly quarried is invariably hard, and in ap- 

 pearance similar to the white limestone in which the flints are imbedded. This 

 soft powdery chalk seems to have been part of the ooze of the Cretaceous sea 

 bottom, which got mixed up or entangled in flints in which silicification had 

 been only partially completed. Thus enclosed in the flinty matrix, it was, 

 no doubt, to a large degree protected from the influences which converted the 

 soft chalk into a hard limestone. On exposure it becomes gradually changed 

 into a powdery substance, and in this state the lovely Microzoa, so abundant in 

 chalk, can be readily separated by washing. 



The white chalk, as developed in Ireland, has for its base a somewhat 

 pebbly and friable limestone, the joints and partings of which are coloured 

 green by a superficial (glauconite ?) deposit. This bed was formerly well seen 

 at Kilcorig, near Lisburn, and Professor Tate, who studied it at that time, has 

 given a good account of it, especially with reference to fossils.* This glauco- 

 nitic band occurs, as above stated, at Kilcorig, on the southern boundary of the 

 Irish Cretaceous series ; and on the north-west it has been found near Money- 

 more, and high up on the steep face of Benbradagh Mountain. The same line of 

 escarpment is continued across Keady Hill, some nine miles to the north of 

 Benbradagh, and in the limestone quarries at Keady there is a fine exposure of 

 this basement bed of the white chalk. The palaeontology of this portion of the 

 chalk is most interesting. Its fossil fauna is much more varied than in any of 

 the beds lying above, and it is much richer in the abundance of specimens which 

 it yields. 



"When preparing my former paper on the Cretaceous Microzoa of the North 

 of Ireland, I was greatly helped in the work by my friend, Mr. "William Gray, 

 M.R.I. A., who kindly procured for me chalk powder from numerous localities 

 throughout the North of Ireland, one of them being Keady Hill. Although the 

 quantity which I received was small, it nevertheless yielded a great variety of 

 Foraminifera, a result to be expected, bearing in mind the great number of 

 Mollusca and Echinoderms that have been collected from this locality ; and I 

 was sorry that I had not more material to examine. Some years later I visited 

 the quarries, in company with two members of the Belfast Naturalists' Field 

 Club, and collected several pounds weight of the material, which occurs there in 



* Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc, 1865. 



