1867.] TATE LOWER LIAS OP lEELAND. 297 



rolled material intermixed T\T.th the debris. 'Next, glacial action 

 cannot have been their origin in Malta — first, from their containing 

 no transported blocks of any size to require or indicate such a 

 moving power, and, secondly, because glacial conditions are incon- 

 sistent with the indications of a prolific land-fauna and vegetation 

 that must have existed there, from the large quantity of the larger 

 species of land shells {Helia; &c.) that are found in it, independently 

 of the Elephant -bones that are also confusedly intermingled in 

 these beds of subangular fragments, sand, and red earth. There- 

 fore I believe that a wave of translation was the true cause of these 

 accumulations of land-shell drift-beds found in Malta and Africa, and 

 such as my fiiend Mr. Busk, F.E.S., has stated to exist also at 

 very high levels in Gibraltar; and I believe that they are generally 

 the indications of sudden uprisings and subsidences of lands adjacent, 

 or of the localities themselves, that have caused waves of translation 

 and accumulation, when unaccompanied by any tranquil marine bed 

 or marine shells, except such as have been confusedly swept up 

 from an adjacent shore. And this general discussion of the question 

 is probably not out of place here, fi^om the general interest existing 

 regarding such beds of debris and di^ift, and which glaciers, floods, 

 and waves are each capable of producing, without doubt ; but each 

 have their special characters and influences, that requii^e close'study to 

 solve, so that the great power and eff'ect of a sea-wave accompanying 

 sudden uprising and subsidences of broad or narrow areas of land may 

 have their due acknowledgment in the past as in present times. 



2. On the Lower Lias of the N'orth-east of Irelaitd. 

 By Kalph Tate, Esq., A.L.S., E.G.S. 



Contexts. 



4. The zone of Ammonites angxdatus. 



5. The zone of Ariiraonites BucJclandi. 



6. The zone of Belemnites acutus. 



1. Introduction. 



2. Section at Waterloo, Lame. 



3. The zone of Ammonites jjlanorhis. 



1. Introduction. — Erom a more extended survey of the Liassic strata 

 in the province of Ulster during the summer of 1866 than I had pre- 

 viously made, and from an examination of the fossils of the Lower 

 Lias of that area, I am constrained to make some slight modifications 

 of my views on the correlation of the members of the Lias of 

 Ireland, as given in a paper entitled " The Liassic strata in the 

 neighbourhood of Belfast," published in the Quarterly Journal of 

 this Society*. 



In that paper I pointed out the occurrence of beds of Ehaetic age, 

 embracing the Avicula-contorta shales and the White Lias, and of 

 beds of the age of the Lower Lias, which I had regarded as equiva- 

 lent to the zone oi Ammonites BucJclandi of the English Liassic series. 



I have examined every exposure of the Lias in the north-east of 



Ireland, and have no reason to take exception to Sir Eichard 



Griffith's mapping of this formation — that is, viewing the Ehaetic 



series as a subformation of the Lias. But the principal portion of 



* Vol. XX. p. 103 (1864). 



