Notes of a Geologist in Ireland During August and September, 1857

Abstract

A notice of the geology around Killarney having already appeared in the Geologist, by “A Brother of the Hammer,” it will be sufficient for us to indicate the best localities for sections and fossils, premising that the upper and lower Old Red Sandstone are unequivocally represented in Ireland, independently of the upper groups of conglomerates, and red and yellow sandstones.The Old Red Conglomerate in Ireland is in many places unconformable to the Old Red Sandstone, and constitutes the base of the carboniferous deposits; and I had been assured that the same unconformability had been detected in the Forest of Dean; but a careful examination, with Dr. Melville, has since convinced me that there is no such unconformability between the Upper Brownstones and the overlying masses of conglomerates and red and yellow sandstones in this or the Blorenge district. In Ireland the local geologists persist in limiting the term Old Red Sandstone to a series of deposits which there, most certainly pertain more to the carboniferous group, viz., the conglomerates, red sandstones, and yellow and grey sandstones, which pass upwards conformably into the Coonahola grits and carboniferous slates. The equivalents of our cornstones and brownstones of Brecon and Monmouth may be studied at Glengariff, at the head of Bantry Bay, where the lowest rocks seen are the Glengariff grits, or upper cornstones, overlaid by the Dingle slates or brownstones, and the red sandstones of the conglomerate series, with no unconformability.