338 PROCEEDIN&S OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Mar. 7, 



slates, with thin grit bands dip south at 45° or bb°. These are 

 occasionally very fossiliferous, the species being some of those given 

 above. Over these are bluish-black smooth lustrous slates with 

 occasional nodules, about the size of walnuts, or larger, called "■ Bulls' 

 Eyes " by the quarrymen. Down in the road, near the river, they 

 dip south at 60°. These bluish-black slates become much paler by 

 exposure to the weather, and might then be described as pale green- 

 ish-grey chloritic-looking slate, with a soapy feel. 



On the south side of the valley, in the lane going up to Ballyheedy 

 Chapel, we meet first with shining slate similar to that just described ; 

 but higher up, near the top of the ridge on which the Chapel stands, 

 the slates become more earthy and blacker, and weather to a rusty 

 brown. These are more like the shales or slates which occur in the 

 Irish Coal-measures above the Carboniferous Limestone than ordi- 

 nary Carboniferous slate ; and- having some reason, from the fossils 

 contained in them, to suspect that they really were Coal-measures, I 

 visited the district again two years ago, to search for other exposures 

 in them, but was not successful in finding any, except one little 

 quarry a mile and a half west-south-west of Ballyheedy at a place 

 called Rag Bridge. 



The shales or slates here dipped at 10° only, to the east, and had 

 precisely the banded iron-stained appearance, characteristic of the 

 Lower Coal-measure shales in Ireland. Their surfaces were covered 

 also with small Posidonomya* , as is so often the case with the Coal- 

 measure shales. 



The most remarkable evidence for the Coal-measure age of these 

 shales, however, is the presence of certain small skeletons of fish, 

 found many years ago at Ballyheedy, which, by the advice of the late 

 Prof. E. Forbes, I submitted to Sir Philip de M. G. Egerton. He 

 referred them to the genus Coelacanthus, a genus which he informed 

 me he had never known to occur below the Coal-measures. Mr. A. 

 M'Henry, one of our fossil-collectors, has found during the past year 

 some specimens very similar to these, and in precisely the same sort of 

 black slate, in the Coal-measures of the coast of Kerry near Bally- 

 bunnion. These latter specimens occurred near the top of the cliff, 

 a quarter of a mile north of the last exposure of Carboniferous Lime- 

 stone, in beds which lie about 800 or 900 feet above the top of that 

 Limestone. 



Professor Huxley has examined both sets of specimens, and wiU 

 shortly figure and describe them ; he refers them to his restricted 

 genus Ccelacanthus, which he also does not know as occurring below 

 the Coal-measures. 



I believe, therefore, that I am fully justified in referring these 

 black slates of Ballyheedy to the true Coal-measures, and that we 

 have in the section, of which fig. 9 is a sketch, the whole series from the 

 bottom part of the Coal-measures, deep into the Old Eed Sandstone, 

 all conformably deposited. Comparing it with the section at Ballea, 

 (fig. 7) 5 miles farther east, I believe the Carboniferous Limestone 



* They would well deserve the name of Posidonoynya-schist, the name given 

 to beds which I believe to be the same beds in the Ehine country. 



