Seeley — Collocation of the Strata at Ely, 347 



between some of tlie rocks in the porphj^ritic Trachyte there, and 

 those which make the Pic de Sancy in the Mont Dor country. 

 The county Antrim is like a ruined Auvergne, from which all 

 traces of the old cones and craters have been removed, and only the 

 sheets of Trachytic and Doleritic lavas left, including here and 

 there the remains of the mud of the old lakes, and of the vegetation 

 which grew upon their shores. 



As it will be some little time before the maps, sections, and 

 explanations of this district can be issued from the press, I send you, 

 with the sanction of the Director- General, this little notice as a 

 pre-announcement of their interest when they do appear. 

 Dublin, July lith. 



P.S. — I forgot to mention that on our second visit to McGarry's 

 quarry we were accompanied by Dr. Andrews, Yice-President of 

 the Queen's College, P>elfast. I have tliis morning received from 

 him a note in which he informs me that " the carbonaceous lignite," 

 of which he took specimens to examine, " when heated in air, 

 burns without flame like some varieties of charcoal. A specimen 

 exhibiting distinctly the fibrous structure of wood was allowed to 

 dry in thin splinters in a dry atmosphere, and was afterwards 

 calcined at a red heat, in a platinum capsule. Of this 1-387 

 grammes lost 1*052 grm. hj this treatment. The specimen under 

 examination c(3ntains therefore 75*8 per cent, of volatile and com- 

 bustible matter." — J. B. J. 



II. — On the Collocation of the Strata at Koswell Hole, 

 NEAR Ely. 



By Harry G. Seeley, F.G.S., Assistant to Professor Sedgwick in the Wood- 

 wardiau Museum of the University of Cambridge. 



IN the Geological Magazine, 1864, Vol. I. p. 150, and 1865, Vol. 

 II. p. 529, two papers of mine appeared upon the strata at Ely. In 

 them, as briefly as might be, are given the sequence of the beds from 

 the Chalk to the Kimmeridge-clay, and the relations of these beds to 

 the Boulder-clay and Kimmeridge-clay on the other side of the pit, 

 where, on all hands, it is allowed to be in situ. 



All my statements, however, about the sequence and determination 

 of the strata, and of their being faulted, have been called in question 

 in a paper lately read by the Kev. 0. Fisher, before the Cambridge 

 Philosophical Society (when I was absent from Cambridge), and 

 which has since been printed in the Proceedings of that Societj^ 

 In place of the view of the case given in my paper, Mr. Fisher 

 would have us believe that the Cretaceous beds at Ely once formed 

 a boulder, which went careering about the Glacial sea on an iceberg 

 till the iceberg toppled it ofl" into a chink at Ely, which had been 

 made for it by Glacial erosion. If there were no evidence on the 

 other sitle of the question, no doubt the idea of an intelligent ice- 

 berg would be an addition to the poetry of science ; but having 

 written facts and drawn facts about the faults in Koswell Hole, 



