378 



THE GEOLOGIST, 



carboniferous deposits ; and I had been assured that the same uncou- 

 formability had been detected in the Forest of Dean ; but a careful 

 examination, with Dr. Melville, has since convinced me that there is 

 no such unconformability between the Upper Brownstones and the 

 overlying masses of conglomerates and red and yellow sandstones in 

 this or the Blorenge district. In Ireland the local geologists persist in 

 limiting the term Old Eed Sandstone to a series of deposits which there 

 most certainly pertain more to the carboniferous group, viz., the 

 conglomerates, red sandstones, and yellow and grey sandstones, which 

 pass upwards conformably into the Coonahola grits and carboniferous 

 slates. The equivalents of our cornstones and brownstones of Brecon 

 and Monmouth may be studied at Glengariff, at the head of Bantry Bay, 

 where the lowest rocks seen are the Glengariff grits, or upper cornstones, 

 overlaid by the Dingle slates or brownstones, and the red sandstones of 

 the conglomerate series, with no unconformability. At Muckross, near 

 Killarney, the yellow sandstone may be seen, and it overlies the red 

 sandstone of the conglomerate series throughout the south of Ireland. 

 These yellow sandstone-beds are especially fossiliferous in the Kiltorkan 

 district, and have furnished Lycopodiaceous plants, the S2)heno^teris 

 Jlihernica, Anodon JuTcesii, the teeth of Dendrodus, and a dermal plate 

 of Coccosteus. They are, no doubt, the equivalents of the Dura Den 

 beds of Scotland, of the beds in the escarpment of the Daren, near 

 Crickowell, in Monmouthshire, where Sir E. Murchison detected a 

 scale of the Holoptychius ; and of the Farlow sandstones in Shropshire, 

 where Mr. Baxter, of Worcester, discovered a Ptericththys. Professor 

 Haughton exhibited some fossil stems of plants from these deposits at 

 Hook Point, County Wexford, which were allied to Stigmaria, and 

 curiously entwined by some climbing plant of that ancient epoch. The 

 yellow sandstone may also be seen at Quakertown, near Mallow, en 

 route from Killarney to Dublin ; but the most instructive section from 

 the cornstone series of the Old Eed (Glengariff grits) to the carboniferous 

 slates, inclusive, within the reach of Killarney, is at Bantry Bay. 



Green Erin " should be ^' Hospitable Erin." We were strangers 

 in the land ; so that the Come and see me " of a distinguished and noble 

 naturalist, who resided in the north of Ireland, sounded right pleasantly 

 in our ears ; and truly courteous and kind was the welcome he gave. 

 We met at the Droglicda terminus, and our host, who acted as our 

 cicerone, knew well the geological formations of the railroad- excavations 



