On BafalUs. *3* 



f>f the common quarries, for feveral miles around, feem to be 

 Only abortive attempts towards the production of a Giants' 

 Caufeway *." 



I (hall now fubjoin the promifed remarks, which are fo 

 original and fatisfactory, that every judicious reader will join 

 with the writer of this letter, in hoping that they will be 

 refumed and given to the public in a more extended form $ 

 and let me add that the teftimony, of fo accurate a judge, 

 of the corre&nefs of Mr. Robinfon's delineation, will raife it 

 high in the opinion of perfons of fcience f. A. B. 



Remarks on the Accounts given by Naturalifis of the Giants 1 

 Caufeway. 



The bafaltic pillars which in the laft thirty years have 

 been difcovered in various parts of France and Germany, and 

 the Hebrides, have excited much attention, and occafioned 

 many controverfies among modern naturalifls. 



The Giants' Caufeway was the firft afTemblage of fuch 

 pillars that attracted notice, and is ftill admitted by all to be 

 the neateft and moil perfect group hitherto difcovered ; but 

 in point of magnificence, the particular fpot called the Giants' 

 Caufeway is inferior to many others on the fame coaft. Mr. 

 Pennant probably knew of no other columns in the north of 

 Ireland when he pronounced, that " bafalt pillars in Staffa 

 far exceed the Irifh in grandeur." He was little aware that 

 our bafaltic country, and efpecially our coaft, exhibits many 

 miles of vaft perpendicular precipices, lined with bafalt co- 

 lumns, in parallel ranges,, with a magnificence unrivalled in 

 any other part of the world. 



The colonade at Fairhead, on the coaft of Antrim, is 

 proved, in Nicholfon's Philofophical Journal for December 

 1 80 1, far to exceed StafTa in grandeur; its columns being 

 each 250 feet long; that is, near five times as long as the 

 tailed pillars at Staffa. 



Nor is our fuperiority confined to the grandeur alone; our 

 towering and extenfive precipices difclofe to the naturalift the 

 materials and arrangement of the ftrata of which this country 



* Appearances of the fame kind have occurred forty miles diftant, near 

 Dromore, in a quarry in the bifhop's demefne land, which is beyond the 

 limits marked in Dr. Hamilton's map of the bafalt country annexed to 

 his letters. The country people here and in the north of England, and 

 even naturalifts in Scotland, ufe the term ivbin-Jione as fynonymous to 

 bafalt. Porphyry, I prefume, is only another name for it. 



f This picture is to be difpofed of by raffle to one hundred fubferibers 

 at one guinea each, of which near ninety have given their names. Mr^ 

 Robinfon is a native of Windermere in VVeftmoreland, and was a pupil of 

 Romney's. Of the poetical talents of him 'and his infant fon, fee the Gen- 

 tleinnu's Magazittq for February laft. p 156. 



Vol. XIII. No. 50. K is 



