262 



The red sandstone is visible near the Botanic Garden, and in many 

 places about the town of Belfast ; at Dunmurry quarries have been 

 worked in it for the railway bridges, which afford very good building 

 stone. Good building flags are also got in it near Carrickfergus, and many 

 other places. 



From Belfast the new red sandstone continues in the face of 

 the hills, under the chalk, above Dunmurry and Lisburn, and along 

 the valley of the Biver Lagan to Moira. About Magheramesk, in the 

 upper part it is mostly soft, and reddish brown, alternating with 

 slaty and gray calcareous marls : it has a similar appearance in the 

 valley of the Eorth, near Belfast, at Woodburn Glen, near Carrickfer- 

 gus, and at Chichester Castle, in Island Magee. In all these places 

 those upper red marls bear veins of a delicately white fibrous gypsum. 

 The new red sandstone continues northward, and is seen on the shore 

 at Ballygally Head, at Ballygilbert, at Carnlough, Garron Point, and 

 at Bed Bay, where it ends, and turns inward in a western direction, 

 round the base of Lurrig Mountain, to Cloghglass Glen at station No. 23 

 of the Chalk Table (see p. 269), where it ends. 



The thickness of the new red sandstone in Antrim is very various. 

 If the section were measured from Cultra, where the base is probably 

 not at the surface, to the white rock quarry (limestone), two miles 

 west of Belfast, it would probably exceed 3000 feet ; but the low 

 westerly dip may not be persistent about the mouth of the Lagan, 

 where the strata are covered up, and a disturbance there would de- 

 range any calculation. Taking the section at Belfast, it is three miles 

 from the quays to the Whiterock quarry, and this, with an average dip 

 of 5°, would make the thickness 2700 feet in that section. At Duncrue, 

 near Carrickfergus, a trial was made for coal, and a shaft sunk 920 

 feet through red strata and salt : from the bottom of this shaft a boring 

 was continued 600 feet more, making a total of 1520 feet, without 

 meeting coal. I shall say more of this place presently. 



Neither at Belfast, Carrickfergus, or Larne, nor anywhere I know 

 on the east eoast, till we come to Bed Bay, is the bottom of this rock to 

 be seen. At Knockan's cross-roads, at the northern base of Lurrig 

 mountain, near Cushendall, where it lies on reddish and bluish porphyry, 

 it is only 500 feet in thickness. Here the outcrop takes a south-west 

 direction up the valley of the Ballyeemin Biver ; and at three miles 

 south-west of Cushendall it thins out rapidly to nothing, and we see 

 no more of it westwards, although the overlying chalk continues; but 

 in this course the chalk rests on mica slate. 



Salt About the year 1 850, the Marquis of Downshire got trials made 



in search of coal at Duncrue, two miles north-west of Carrickfergus, 

 by sinking through the new red sandstone there. It was probably 

 thought the sandstone might not be thick, that they would soon get 

 through it, come upon the coal-measures, which lie next below it, and 

 there work a coal mine, as has often been the case in England. They 

 failed to find coal, but they found salt. The first shaft sunk at Dun- 

 crue was at 280 feet above sea level. In 1852, the details of the strata 



