6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [iSToV. 20, 



this low boggy ground is conveyed through the beach by the usual 

 contrivance of tidal floodgates or sluices ; so there is reason to believe 

 that the peat on land and that beneath the bay are at the same 

 level, and connected under the beach, and that the sea, by throwing 

 the latter up, has banked itself out from a considerable portion of 

 the low ground. 



The part of this beach between Clay Castle and Youghal is stated 

 by residents in the latter place to have been, a few years ago, com- 

 posed of larger boulders, and so much higher than at present that 

 persons walking behind it could not see the breakers washing its 

 seaward side, and that it has been reduced by the action of the sea. 



The eminence called Clay Castle appears, from the Ordnance 

 Map, to have an elevation of 91 feet. It rises gradually from the 

 beach on the north-east side, more abruptly on the south-west and 

 north-west, while on the seaward side it presents a cliff partly ver- 

 tical or very steep, and partly sloping at the angles usual for the 

 incoherent materials of which it is composed — namely, sandy clay, 

 sand, coarse gravel, and pebbly beds, mingled with some tenacious 

 clay, and occasionally cemented by carbonate of lime, or, in short, 

 such local materials as characterize many parts of the Glacial Drift. 

 It is rudely stratified, the layers being approximately horizontal, and 

 the more clayey and sandy beds nearest to the base ; at the south- 

 west end of the cliff the continuation of the beds is interrupted by the 

 outHne of the hill, to which they do not here conform, except an 

 uppermost light loamy layer, which seems to form the surface every- 

 where. From its summit, at the edge of the cliff, it dechnes inland, 

 and presents no peculiarity of form different from any of the similar- 

 looking mounds of Glacial Drift in this country, except its being 

 cut off to seaward so as to form a cliff. It was once considerably 

 higher, as it formerly extended further seaward with the same 

 outline. Dr. Smith speaks of it as a promontory ; but it has now 

 nothing of this form, being cut off by the straight coast-line at its 

 foot. 



On careful examination of its materials, it is found to contain 

 fragments and pebbles of the local rocks, with many weathered 

 flints, presenting all the appearance of chalk-flints*, and difiicult 

 to refer to the veinstones or hornstones of local rocks — though chalk 

 with flints does not occur in situ within great distances, and it can 

 hardly be supposed that these flints came into their present situation 

 in the strata of the hill through human agency in the form of ships' 

 ballast. 



The stratified drift-like appearance of these deposits might 

 lead any one to set them down as such ; but close search shows 

 that, unlike the generality of Irish Glacial Drift, or any which 

 it has befallen me to explore f, the strata of the hill contain 



* Although a very large number of these flints have been broken and closely 

 examined, not one was found to contain a fossil, or the fragment of one, which, 

 would fix their age. 



t I am aware that such shells and fragments have been fovmd in a few 

 localities in the drift of Ireland ; but, having for years searched every gravel- 



