Page:Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, vol. 33.djvu/721

Rh These include the coal-fields of Castlecomer and Killenaule, with the surrounding districts occupying portions of the counties of Carlow, Queen's County, Kilkenny, and Tipperary, those of Mill-street in co. Cork, and a few latches in the counties of Kerry, Limerick, and Clare. The succession of the beds above the Carboniferous Limestone in these districts is remarkably uniform, and has been illustrated in the memoirs of Griffith, Kane, Meadows, and of the officers of the Geological Survey; so that all that remains for me to do is to describe the series in one district as a type of the whole, and refer the different beds to their representatives in England and Wales. For this purpose I shall take the section which may be made out in crossing the country from east to west through Carlow and the centre of the coal-basin of Castlecomer, referring to the accompanying section (fig. 1) in illustration of the subject.

It will be seen from this section that the Castlecomer Coal-field forms a basin, in the centre of which are the highest beds, surrounded by a zone of "Gannister Beds" (stage E) supported by flagstones, and these latter by shales and flaggy beds, which in their turn rest on the Carboniferous Limestone. This order of succession may be observed in many places on all sides of the coal-field ; and the strata may be arranged as follows in descending order, the stages (A, B, C, &c.) affixed to each division corresponding with those of the British series (see Table, pp. 615, 616):—