SfMONDS NOTES OF A GEOLOGIST IN IRELAND. 383 



the rocks of the Old Eed Sandstone to those of the coal-measure clays 

 above the millstone-grit. 



riorence Court, the seat of the Earl of Enniskillen, is situated on the 

 Calp series, which we observed was cut into by several water-courses 

 and drains. The mansion is handsome, and surrounded by noble trees ; 

 one avenue of the silver fir alone commanding the attention of the 

 naturalist. The museum is an octagon room lighted from the roof, and 

 contains, with the exception perhaps of Sir P. Egerton's, the finest 

 private collection of fossil-fishes in Great Britain. On a platform in 

 the centre there towers the perfect skeleton of the gigantic elk, 

 Megaceros Hilernicus, and the walls are surrounded by glass-cases 

 filled with the choicest fossils. "We actually revelled among the 

 remains of fossil-fish, from the pigmy teeth and spines of the Upper 

 Silurian, to the stony yet fresh-looking specimens of the Tertiaries. But 

 to none did we pay such especial attention as to the Ichthyolites of the 

 Old Eed Sandstone, very many of which were obtained from localities 

 rendered classic by the pen of the lamented Hugh Miller. There were 

 the stony relics of those long-dead organisms, with their delicate shadings, 

 and the dingy deep gray of the stone converted into light-buff, 

 and on this ground, not very different from that which the limner would 

 choose for a drawing in chalk, the fossils stand out in delicate azure, 

 and varying in tint from a deep ultramarine to a light verditure." 

 "While, as we mused on the Coccosteus and Dipterus, the Cephalaspis 

 and Glyptolepis, and those bituminous schists of Caithness, with " the 

 colour as intensely black as that of the sealing-wax of a funeral letter, 

 and turned over the pages of the work that describes these wonders in 

 words so vivid and so true, we thought that 'Devonian' seemed 

 scarcely the term to apply to those strata that have furnished those 

 organisms and their history ; while right glad are we to find that the 

 chief of Siluria, in his new edition of his well-known work, still holds 

 well and firmly, as regards the Scotch and Herefordshire districts, to 

 the good old title of ' Old Eed Sandstone.' " 



The Calp of this district extends from Lough Erne to Bundoran, on 

 the south-east coast of Donegal Bay ; and in Belmore, near Enniskillen, 

 and Ben N"aglin, near Elorence Court, it is surmounted by 600 feet of 

 upper carboniferous limestone. There is an impure limestone of the 

 Calp series, which in this district is highly fossiliferous and full of 

 oncrinital heads and stems, with large and perfect Producti, whcih benig 



