260 



With regard to fossils, I had not a sufficient opportunity to get them 

 in those coal rocks, because the works are all stopped, and nothing is 

 doing now (1858). The best place to examine the black shales for 

 fossils is Murlogh Bay, where, if a proper excavation were made in 

 the roof of the coal, the result, no doubt, would be satisfactory. Two 

 old adits have already been driven into the coal there, near the south 

 end of the greenstone, which would facilitate a search. On a former 

 occasion I examined several blocks of sandstone that fell from the cliff's 

 near the Gobb Colliery, and got there some of the very finest specimens 

 of Lepidodendron, many of them a foot in breadth, and well marked. 

 There were also many round forms like trunks of trees, some of them 

 from one to two feet in diameter. 



New Red Sandstone. 



The new red sandstone underlies the chalk of the north-east of 

 Ireland generally. The bottom of it, so far as I know, is to be seen 

 only in two places in the province of Ulster — that is, at Lissan De- 

 mesne, in the county of Tyrone, and at Cushendall. The conglome- 

 rate, which is general at the base of it, in both these places is composed 

 of pebbles of the adjacent rocks, mixed up with red sand, and all har- 

 dened. At Lissan the pebbles are angular, and of the same kind of red 

 granite which occurs a short distance to the north of it. Here there is 

 a large greenstone protrusion between the granite and the new red con- 

 glomerate ; and it is remarkable, that a single pebble of the greenstone 

 could not be fonnd in the conglomerate, although it is the rock imme- 

 diately underlying it — a fact which leads to the conclusion, that the 

 greenstone is more recent than either the granite or the New Red 

 Sandstone. 



At Cushendall the pebbles are mostly of the same kind of reddish 

 and bluish porphyry, on which it rests, with many pebbles of mica 

 slate, the native rock of which is not in contact here, but exists in the 

 country a mile and a half to the west. There are also some pebbles 

 of brown granite rock in the conglomerate, and similar pebbles are nu- 

 merous both in the porphyry, and in the brown Silurian grit to the 

 north. This conglomerate is well exposed on the shore, to the north 

 of Redbay Castle. The pebbles of porphyry, which are numerous, and 

 of mica slate, which are few, range from nine inches in diameter 

 downwards. 



The new red sandstone is most developed in the vicinity of Bel- 

 fast. There, south of the River Lagan, it joins the old grauwacke of 

 the northern part of the county of Down, and the manner in which 

 they join is worthy of observation. The junction is first visible on the 

 south shore of Belfast Lough, two miles south-east of Holywood: oppo- 

 site to this village it is half a mile wide, extending southward to the 

 base of the steep grauwacke ridge, which lies there. Prom this place j 

 it joins the grauwacke as far as Warringstown, three miles south-west 

 of Magheralin, a distance of 26 miles. At the eastern end of this red 

 sandstone, beyond Cultra, it dips at about an average angle of 10° 



