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of coast between thirty and forty miles in extent, that at length I obtained 
fossils, and strange to say, these I found, not at a distant point, but within 
two or three hundred yards of Government House, where I resided. In 
1837, when a considerable quantity of stone was removed for the purpose 
of enlarging and deepening the little harbour of Duncannon, in the county 
of Wexford, I first discovered the impression of a shell ; continuing the 
search my son obtained two specimens of Calymene duplicata, and I found 
altogether upwards of twelve species of mollusca and several specimens of 
Chaetetes, all of them Llandeilo types. These were all obtained from a 
black matrix of very limited extent, and which in some portions presented 
a shining appearance, so much so that it was mistaken for coal, and several 
of the inhabitants of the adjacent village carried quantities of it away for 
fuel, but instead of it burning blandly, as they expected, it proved most 
refractory and flew in their faces with a loud crackling noise. Through 
this mass ran a vein of rose-coloured quartz studded with yellow pyrites, 
which so much resembled gold that some of it was sent by a sanguine 
native to the late Lord Templemore, the owner of the property, who had 
it analyzed, but with the usual results of such crude speculations. Some 
very beautiful carbonate of lime was also found. On the opposite side of 
the estuary, which is here somewhat more than a mile across, I obtained an 
abundance of fossils which had also wholly escaped the notice of the 
Geological Surveyors. Papers of mine being read at meetings of the 
Geological Societies of London and Dublin, attention was directed to these 
deposits, but even then, in consequence of the upturned edges of the strata 
being almost flush with the shore, and only visible at half tide, they were 
not known to the Surveyors until I pointed them out to Sir Henry James. 
But to return to the Llandeilo Beds at Duncannon. It was some years 
before the Geological Survey would admit that Llandeilo flags occurred in 
the part of Ireland to which I now refer. Sir Koderick Murchison, in a 
letter to me, wrote as follows: — 
"My dear Sir, — I beg to thank you heartily for your labours in 
developing the relations and contents of the Silurian rocks in the South- 
East of Ireland. All the Trilobites from that region (Newtown Head, 
Tramore &c.) belong unquestionably to the Caradoc formation, with 
which Bala is now identified." 
It would be unjust to omit saying that Sir Eoderick had not seen the 
fossils from Duncannon when he made these remarks. 
