328 Wright— Cretaceous Foraminifera of Ready Hill. 
of two kinds— (1) Ordinary flints in amorphous masses, and usually lying m 
bands parallel with the bedding of the chalk, and having the longer ax]B in Jhe 
plane of the bedding ; (2) Paramoudras (in England known as potstones), 
usually of an irregular fusiform contour, variable in shape, and having a core ot 
white limestone passing through them from end to “d ; ^ays^ccurm 
an upright position, or at right angles to the plane of the bedding, being the 
reverse of the position in which the other flints are found. 
Most of the ordinary flints are of a homogenous, silicious structure through- 
out, others have incorporated with them a white limestone, and some a mea y 
powder. This material in flints freshly guarded is invariably hard, and in ap- 
pearance similar to the white limestone in which the flints are imbedded. T is 
soft powdery chalk seems to have been part of the oose of the Cretaceous sea 
bottom, which got mixed up or entangled in flints in which siliciflcation had 
been only partially completed. Thus enclosed in the flinty matrix, it was, 
no doubt, to a large degree protected from the influences which converted the 
soft chalk into a hard limestone. On exposure it becomes gradually change 
into a powdery substance, and in this state the lovely Microsoa, so abundant m 
chalk, can he readily separated by washing. 
The' white chalk, as developed in Ireland, has for its base a somewhat 
pebbly and friable limestone, the joints and partings of which are coloured 
green by a superficial (glauconite ?) deposit. This bed was formerly well seen 
at Kilcorig, near Lisburn, and Professor Tate, who studied it at that time, 
given a good account of it, especially with reference to fossils * This g auco- 
nitic hand occurs, as above stated, at Kilcorig, on the southern boundary of the 
Irish Cretaceous series ; and on the north-west it has been found near Moneys 
more, and high up on the steep face of Benbradagh Mountain. The same line o 
escarpment is continued across Keady Hill, some nine miles to the north of 
Benbradagh, and in the limestone quarries at Keady there is a fine exposure o 
this basement bed of the white chalk. The paleontology of this portion of the 
chalk is most interesting. Its fossil fauna is much more varied than in any of 
the beds lying above, and it is much richer in the abundance of specimens whic 
it yields . 
When preparing my former paper on the Cretaceous Microzoa of the Nort 
of Ireland, I was greatly helped in the work by my friend, Mr. William Gray, 
M B I. A., who kindly procured for me chalk powder from numerous localities 
throughout the North of Ireland, one of them being Keady Hill. Although the 
quantity which I received was small, it nevertheless yielded a great variety o 
Foraminifera, a result to be expected, bearing in mind the great number o 
Mollusca and Echinoderms that have been collected from this locality ; and 1 
was sorry that I had not more material to examine. Some years later I visited 
the quarries, in company with two members of the Belfast Naturalists Field 
Club, and collected several pounds weight of the material, which occurs there m 
Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., 1865, 
