OF THE BASALTIC TOKlVrATlON OF "ULSTER. 85 



lower level and with the same dip, a repetition that could only occur 

 through subsidence. 



The Ballypalady Leaf -bed. 



The beds were first exposed in a small railway-cutting about a mile 

 north of Templepatrick station. A quarry was subsequently opened in 

 them in a ravine a few yards to the south, and has been worked some 

 200 yards east and west, with a depth of about 25 feet. A massive 

 basalt dyke separates it from the cutting, so that it is impossible to 

 say whether the section on the higher level is an upthrow of the 

 beds seen in the quarry or a higher portion of the series which 

 should be added to its thickness. The total thickness is in any case 

 unknown, as the quarry does not expose the base. The beds are 

 laminated, indurated, ferruginous earth, fine breccias of altered 

 volcanic material, and thin seams of lignite irregularly deposited 

 and somewhat twisted. The prevailing colour is an ochreous brown. 

 The breccias, though coarse, seem wholly free from any mixture of 

 the older rocks, and contain neither flint nor lime derived from the 

 Chalk. 



The plants do not appear to be confined to any particular horizon 

 or patches, but are distributed, in more or less perfect preservation, 

 wherever the matrix happens to be sufficiently compact, and fir- 

 cones are found even in the breccias. The beds have hitherto been 

 supposed to be lacustrine ; but the coarseness and brecciated nature 

 of some of the layers, and their irregularity, indicate the bed of a 

 shifting river subject to variations in volume. The width of the 

 deposit cannot be ascertained ; but in the cutting about a quarter of 

 a mile to the south the beds seem possibly Geyserian and to have been 

 subjected to great heat. Their horizon has been determined by the 

 Geological Survey at some 600 feet from the base, and 400 feet from 

 the top of the basaltic formation. 



Iron-ores, boles, lithomarges, and pisolitic ores are widely distri- 

 buted through the basalts, for the most part on one horizon, but are 

 destitute of all plant-remains except wood. They are unfortunately 

 nowhere fossiliferous except at Ballypalady ; but as the section there 

 is not complete, it may be useful to supplement it with one quoted 

 in the 'Guide to Belfast ' by the Naturahsts' Eield Club, p. 60, at 

 Belumford, Island Magee. Here the pisolitic ore averages about 

 18 inches thick, the aluminous ore varies up to 5 feet thick, and 

 the lower or lithomarge bed is sometimes found as thick as 40 feet 

 or more. 



The Glenarm Leaf-hed. 



This bed occurs in the iron-ore and bauxite mine of Libbert*, 

 about a mile in rear of Glenarm, and about 700 feet above the sea- 

 level. The Chalk crops out in the road, and the basalt a little above 



* The mine was fidl of water and quite inaccessible for some years past, 

 until I had it drained and reopened. 



