538 ME. J. A. DOUGLAS ON THE [Nov. I909, 



30. The Carboniferous Limestone of County Clare (Ireland). 

 By James Archibald Douglas, M.A., B.Sc, F.G.S. (Read 

 June 16th, 1909.) 



[Plates XXVI & XXVII— Fossils.] 



Contents. 



Page 



I. Introduction 538 



II. Sequence of the Deposits 541 



III. Nature and Extent of the Outcrop, and Topographical 



Feat u res 541 



IV. Generalized Description of the Faunal Succession 548 



V. Description of certain Fossil Localities 557 



VI. Correlation of the Succession in County Clare with that of 



other Districts in the British Isles 564 



VII. Summary of Conclusions 570 



VIII. Palseontological Notes 571 



IX. Bibliography 582 



I. Introduction. 



The work of examining the Carboniferous Limestone of County 

 Clare was undertaken with a view to ascertaining whether the 

 zonal sequence of the fauna, established by Dr. Arthur Vaughan 

 for contemporaneous rocks in the Bristol district, and since proved 

 to hold good for other localities in Great Britain, was also applicable 

 to these beds in the West of Ireland. This district, which forms 

 the western limit of the great limestone-plain of Central Ireland, 

 furnishes one of the most typical examples of a limestone country 

 in the British Isles, and it is strange that it has not attracted more 

 attention from Irish geologists. Although Dr. Wheelton Hind 1 

 has studied the overlying shales and shown them to be the equi- 

 valent of the Pendleside Series, the fauna of the limestone has up 

 to the present remained undescribed. 



A brief allusion to the limestone in the extreme south of the 

 county is given in the recent Survey Memoir on the Geology of the 

 Limerick District ; but, with the exception of accounts of cave- 

 explorations, 2 there are, so far as I am aware, no papers bearing 

 on the geology of Eastern Clare of more recent date than the 

 original Memoirs published by the Irish Geological Survey in 1860 

 and 1863. 



1 'Notes on the Homotaxial Equivalents of the Beds which immediately 

 succeed the Carboniferous Limestone in the West of Ireland' Proc. Eoy. 

 Irish Acad. vol. xxv (1905) Sect. B, pp. 93-116. 



2 R. F. Scharff, R. J. Ussher, G-. A. J. Cole, E. T. Newton, A. F. Dixon, & 

 T. J. Westropp, ' The Exploration of the Caves of County Clare ' Trans. Roy. 

 Irish Acad. vol. xxxiii (1906) Sect. B, pp. 1-76. 



