42 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



With regard to the Plants of the Old Red Sandstone, allusion mnst 

 be made to the importance of one fossil locality, that of Kiltorcan Hill, 

 in the county of Kilkenny, as presenting by its fossils the only certain 

 evidence of true Old Red Sandstone in Ireland ; for at this place Plants 

 are found associated with fish remains of a peculiar character, compa- 

 rable with those characteristic forms met with in the North of Scotland 

 and the Orkneys ; the remarkably fine state of preservation of these 

 fossils being due to the mineral condition of the rock in which they are 

 imbedded, which is fine-grained greenish-yellow Sandstone, readily 

 separating into slabs of uniform thickness. The assemblage of fossils 

 from this locality consists of Plants of several kinds, such as may have 

 vegetated on the borders of a freshwater lake — a large bivalve shell, 

 allied to the river mussel of the present day, named Anodonta Jukesii ; 

 claws and other fragments of a remarkable Crustacean, probably Ptery- 

 gotus ; and an abundance offish remains, consisting of jaws with teeth, 

 large bony plates and scales of Ganoid fishes, comparable with Coccos- 

 teus, Glyptolepis, &c, of the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland. The 

 most abundant of the Plants collected from this celebrated quarry is a 

 large fossil fern, first made known by Professor Edward Forbes, at the 

 British Association Meeting at Belfast, in 1852, and referred by him to 

 the genus Cyclopteris, being named Cyclopteris Hibernicus. Since then, 

 however, specimens have been submitted to M. Adolphe Brongniart, 

 the eminent fossil botanist, who considered it to be more allied to Sphe- 

 nopteris, and to belong to Adiantites, a section of that genus, in con- 

 sequence of its possessing an intermediate pair of leaflets springing di- 

 rectly from the rachis between the lateral pinnae. From time to time 

 other specimens have been collected of this, the most ancient tree fern, 

 serving to elucidate various points in its structure, such as its mode of 

 fructification, attachment to the stem, &c, which were alluded to by 

 me, at subsequent meetings of the British Association, and in the Ex- 

 planations of the Maps published by the Geological Survey of Ireland.* 



Another species of fossil fern has been described by me from the same 

 place, under the name of Sphenopteris JTookeri; and for a third I pro- 

 pose the name of Sphenopteris Humphrey sianum, after Mr. H. T. Hum- 

 phreys, in whose fine collection of Kiltorcan fossils I first observed it — 

 the two latter species being comparatively rare, only a few specimens of 

 each having been procured. There are numerous specimens of other 

 Plants in the fine collections made from this place, at the Museums of Tri- 

 nity College, the Royal Dublin Society, and the Irish Industrial Museum, 

 some of them still remaining to be described ; amongst them large fluted 

 stems, which appeared to be identical with Sagenaria Veltheimiana of the 

 German fossil botanists ; Palaeontologists, however, labour under great 

 difficulty in dealing with some fossils, especially the remains of Plants, 

 which are often fragmentary, and require the examination of a large 

 number of specimens, and repeated visits to the places where they are 



* Explanation of Sheets 147 and 157, Geological Survey of Ireland. 



