498 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
added to water which, contains much organic colouring matter, it throws down 
this latter ; but we doubt that its purifying action extends beyond this. 
A Peculiar Ironstone , which was found about eight miles from Neuban, 
was described by Dr. Phipson at the last meeting of the British Association. 
The specimen was that of a fine red quartz rock, penetrated by a brilliant 
steel-looking ironstone, appearing more like the metal itself than an ore. 
Analysis showed it to contain 57 per cent, of per-oxide of iron ; 23 per cent, 
of magnetic oxide ; 19 of quartz ; and traces of manganese. It yielded iron 
<of an excellent quality, but difficult to smelt. From the nature of the 
hrematites in this district, Dr. Phipson draws the conclusion that they have 
been formed under geological circumstances, different from those attendant 
•on the formation of our English haematites. 
GEOLOGY AND PALAEONTOLOGY. 
A Peculiar Conglomerate. — Mr. John Kelly, of the Irish Geological Society, 
has addressed a letter to the editor of the Geological Magazine , describing 
a peculiar conglomerate bed which is on the shore at Cushenden, in the 
county of Antrim. The mass is about fifty feet above the sea, and some 
thirty yards long and wide. It is composed of round pebbles of quartz rock, 
from two to four inches in diameter ; and they occur so closely packed, that 
-every one is in contact with another, and no room left, except for the sand 
which cements them, and which fills the openings between the pebbles, when 
originally heaped together. These pebbles, as just stated, are of quartz rock, 
and therefore all of one kind. There is no actual rock of the same kind, on 
the shore, nearer than — (1) Malin Head, or Culdaff, in Donegal ; (2) Belderg, 
•east of Belmullet in Mayo, where it occupies the shore for fourteen miles ; 
and (3) in the twelve bins, near Clifden, in Connemara, where it forms bands 
interstratified with Mica Slate. This mass is backed by a hill of brown 
Devonian grits and shales interstratified, which extends from Cushendun to 
Oushindall. . In both those rocks are a few round pebbles of quartz rock, 
similar to those in the mass on the shore, but in the rocks of the hill they are 
thinly disseminated, perhaps six or ten of them to a cubic yard. Mr. Kelly 
•desires to know how the quartz pebbles came together unmixed with any 
other species of rock. The answer which the editor of the Geological Magazine 
gives, in a footnote, seems very like the correct one. It is to the effect that 
in the grinding of the several elements which were being rubbed together 
to form the conglomerate, the softer ones became reduced to powder. 
The Metamorjpliic and Fossiliferous Pocks of Galway. — These, which have 
been thoroughly described by Professor Harkness, of Queen’s College, Cork, 
in a paper lately read before the Geological Society, appear to consist in 
great part of a contorted gneissose rock, striking east and west, with a pre- 
vailing southerly dip toward the granitic area of Galway Bay. Quartzose 
rocks, exhibiting great folds, give rise to the bold mountainous scenery of 
