££4f oy fHE BASALTIC COUNTRY IN IRELAND. 



proofs that the it, that is perhaps two hundred feet higher; the ascent of 

 K * te t rrU were tne strata to the southward having elevated their planes so 

 once commit- much in a distance of four miles, the probable interval be- 

 ous# tween the summits of these mountains. 



We are now to decide whether this calcareous and basal- 

 tic fragment, on the summit of Slievegallon mountain, be 

 the last remnant of the old arrangement we have been trac- 

 ing, and ascertaining with so much precision, for seventeen 

 or eighteen miles from the sea, and twenty-live miles along 

 the coast ; but now interrupted by the valley of the Maijola, 

 like our former more diminutive interruptions, and also like 

 them resumed at the next elevation, in the same rectilineal 

 course, the strata preserving the same order, and the same 

 characteristic marks- Or whether these strata, appearing 

 on the summit of Slievegallon, be the commencement of a 

 new arrangement, abandoned by nature as soon as begun: 

 which is highly improbable, for neither limestone nor basalt 

 is to be found on the mountain, except in this solitary hum- 

 mock. 



We might, by a minute attention to the inclinations and 

 arrangements of the strata contiguous to the other interrup- 

 tions 1 have enumerated, prove in like manner, that the ba- 

 saltic masses crowning the summits of the surrounding 

 hills and mountains are merely the remnants of strata 

 once extensive and continuous, but interrupted and carried 

 oif, as in the preceding case, by the same powerful agent. 



The more diminutive inequalities scattered over the whole 

 surface of our area, and always produced by interruptions 

 oi the strata, would still more easily admit the application 

 of the same reasoning, from the contiguity of their abrupt- 

 ed parts ; but the detail would be tedious ; those who wish 

 to pursue the subject farther must come to the scene them- 

 selves. 



Materials completely carried off. 



Materials com- A circumstance perhaps still more extraordinary is the 

 pktely corned oom plete removal of all the materials, that once filled up 

 the intervals between the abrupted parts of these strata. I 

 have stated in my 9th fact, that the materials, that had for- 

 merly composed the projecting parts of our northern facades 

 and precipices, had totally disappeared. 



