SYMONDS — NOTES OF A GEOLOGIST IN IRELAND. 
385 
"far from the light and the exciseman." Goniatites, Posidonomj-oe, and 
beautiful corals may bo obtained by following the banks of the streams 
that flow from a small lake beneath the escarpment of Kulkeagh, and 
which we traced through the moors ; and for sections or fossils we 
cannot recommend this route too highly. 
The coal-measures are miserable representatives, as regards that 
precious mineral, of our English equiva'cnts, and probably have been 
much denuded. Coal-plants are abunlant with marine fossils, such as 
Belleroplion and Pecten pcipyraceus, but I think that the Irish series 
of coal-measures are no more than the millstone-grit (Rosser seams) of 
the South Wales basin ; the true coal-series being altogether absent. 
Ballycastle, Dungannon, and Coal Island are the localities whereat to 
study these coal-measures. For the northward-bound traveller our 
note-book furnishes the following localities, from the information given 
us by Mr. John Kelly, for unconformable junctions of Old Red 
conglomerate (or its equivalent) with mica-slates ; these mica-slates 
being most probably altered Lower Silurians of the Lingula or Llandeilo 
age : — Sligo, LugnadufFa, seven miles west of Ballysadare, and 
Clonacool, thirteen miles west of Cooloouy. At Bundoran, three miles 
■west of Ballyshannon, is a very peculiar section, the Old Red being cut 
olT by a fault, and the Calp wanting. Donegal, Ballykillowen, eleven 
miles north east of Ballyshannon, and CormuUin, eight miles north-east, 
furnish excellent sections. 
"We returned to Dublin, via Cavan and Mullingar, a most unin- 
teresting route, but well worth seeing once in one's life, were 
it merely to gain an idea of a true bog-country. Kilnaleck, south 
of Cavan, and near Loch Sheelin, is interesting as furnishing Lower 
Silurian anthracitic coal, first discovered by Mr. J. Kelly. This 
is a very important rock, and will probably occupy the attention of 
geologists very particularly, in order to determine the character and 
status of the plants that formed so old a coal-seam. Were they merely 
marine fucoids and sea-wrack, sea- weeds of primeval oceans ? or were 
they land-plants that bent to the breeze and ripened to the sun of ages 
so distant that time furnishes no reckoning-log ? Videhimus ! 
