84 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
Dr. Griffith considers that these Old Bed Sandstone beds should be 
associated with the Carboniferous System, to which they are conformable, 
rather than the Devonian System, which can hardly be said to have been 
yet found in Ireland. In this view all the working geologists of Ireland 
seem to agree. 
There is, however, very great difficulty in determining the age of 
the grits and slates on which these rocks rest in the Dingle district. 
They are conformable to strata at Ferriter’s Cove, which have been 
proved distinctly to be Upper Silurian from the fossils contained in them, 
but they resemble in appearance and composition the grits found to the 
south of Castlemaine Harbour, and which have been called by Professor 
Jukes, the Glengariff Grits; and these grits are quite conformable to the 
shales of the Old Eed Sandstone and the beds of the Carboniferous Sys¬ 
tem which overlie them. This is a difficulty which as yet has received 
no solution, and presents one of the greatest puzzles in all local geology; 
and, notwithstanding all that has been said and written on this subject, 
I cannot conclude better than by recommending our enterprising and 
earnest young friends to hasten with the fine season to the south of Ire¬ 
land, and to work at these mountains until their history is clearly un¬ 
ravelled and explained. 
ON A FOSSIL elephant’s TOOTH OBTAINED FROM THE EXCAVATION OF THE 
DOAB CANAL, IN UPPER INDIA. BY ALEX. CARTE, M. A., M. B., M. R. I. A. 
In the November Number of the “ Journal of the Geological Society of 
London,” Dr. Falconer, who is, perhaps, the highest authority we have 
on Indian Palaeontology, remarks in the introduction to his paper u On 
the species of Mastodon and Elephant occurring in the fossil state in 
Great Britain,”—that “it is of the highest importance to Geology that 
every mammal found in the fossil state should be defined, as regards, 
first, its specific distinctness; and second, its range of existence, geogra¬ 
phically and in time, with as much exactitude as the available materials 
and the state of our knowledge at the time will admit. Every form 
well ascertained becomes a powerful exponent (i. e. to the geologist), 
while, ill determined, it is a fertile source of error.” And again:— 
“There is a subordination in the value of the (paleontological) evidence: 
the higher the form in the scale of organization, the more weighty is the 
import of its indication.” In the conclusion of his paper Dr. Falconer 
observes that “ the Mollusca have unquestionably been wielded as a most 
powerful exponent of geological chronology, and of the successive phy¬ 
sical changes which have taken place on the surface of the earth. But 
it will hardly be denied that the evidence presented by mammalian re¬ 
mains, when obtained in sufficient variety and abundance, is of greater 
significance as a test of contemporaneous formations in geology, or the 
reverse.” The importance, as will be seen from these quotations, that 
Dr. Falconer attaches to the evidence afforded by mammalian remains, 
involving, as a matter of course, investigations in comparative anatomy, 
has mainly influenced me to enter upon the identification of a specimen 
