228 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



shall be freed from annoyance of incurable diseases, 

 as conuulsions, the falling euile and deadly poi- 

 sions." 



We find two other species of asses described in this 

 veracious history, viz. , the Alborach and Axis ; the 

 former is, the author says, "the animal whereupon the 

 Turkish priestes and blasphemous idolaters perswade 

 the silly pilgrims of Media that Mahomet was 

 carried up to heaven." 



Of the Badger, otherwise called a Brocke, a Gray, 

 or a Bauson. — The Rev. E. Topsell most unkindly 

 exposes the ignorance of this animal ; he commences 

 his description by saying, " The Badger could neuer 

 find aGreeke name. The Italians call a Badger Tasso ; 

 the Rhetians, Tasch ; the French, Tausson, Taixen, 

 Tasso//, Tesson, and sometimes Grisart (for her colour), 

 sometimes Blareau (now Bla/rea/i), and at Parris 

 Bedo/io ; the Spaniardes, Tasugo, Texon; the Ger- 

 mans, Tachs, orDaxs; the Illyrians, Gezweez. Badgers 

 are plentiful in Naples, Sicilly, Lucano, and in the 

 Alpine and Heluitian coasts ; so are they also in 

 England. In Italy and Germany they eate grayes 

 flesh, and boil it with peares, which maketh the flesh 

 tast like the flesh of a Porcupine. The flesh is best 

 in September, if it be fat." 



(To be co/Uii/ued.) 



AN EDITOR'S HOLIDAY IN THE WEST 

 OF IRELAND. 



ONE of the most bewilderingly lovely drives or 

 walks in the West of Ireland is that from 

 Westport to Cliefden. The distance is something over 

 forty miles, and the road is tolerably good, although in 

 many places chequered by acclivities and declivities. 

 If walking, we should recommend the pedestrian to do 

 the first eighteen miles to Leenane, which is, in our 

 opinion, the most beautiful spot we visited. The road 

 thereto lies over the mountains, and, after gradually as- 

 cending three or four miles from Westport, we traverse 

 the surface of a table-land, everywhere boggy and wet, 

 and with pretty loughs or lakes studding its surface. 

 Some of these loughs are very paradises of water- 

 plants, and their margins are covered with the cool 

 green leaves and exquisite white blossoms of the 

 common water-lily. All round this table-land there 

 rises a panorama of hills. Some of them may be 

 called mountains, for they are three thousand feet in 

 height, and their tops stretch upwards into the sky, 

 so that the cloud scenery is mapped and patterned by 

 their presence, and presents quite a different appear- 

 ance to cloud-land in our own parts of the country. 

 They have a riven and a weird look, these ancient 

 hills, for they are composed of the very hardest rocks 

 known to geologists— namely, the metamorphic rocks. 

 The Silurian sandstones and slates and limestones, most 

 of which once contained fossil remains, have been so 



completely altered by heat that scarcely a trace now 

 remains of a fossil, and yet their geological map 

 — for this country has been geologically surveyed 

 by some of our ablest men — shows the whole region 

 in a variously coloured pattern which indicates how 

 different is the variety of rocks. The white lines on 

 the map, which represent faults or vertical crackings 

 and slippings of the solid rock, are exceedingly 

 numerous. Along the line of some of these faults 

 the valleys now extend, for they have proved the 

 weak places where weathering action could be best 

 exerted. The outlines of these grand old hills 

 have been sculptured by Father Time. They are 

 amongst the oldest of our British mountains, and no 

 country in the world has such ancient mountains as 

 Great Britain and Ireland ! For millions of years 

 the storms of different climates have gathered around 

 these ancient peaks, and have spent their fury upon 

 them not in vain, for it is chiefly to the combined 

 and continued action of the weather that their very 

 shapes are now due. 



Fig. 196. Terraced Limestone Hills, Glen Colombkill. 



From the table-land we have mentioned, a peaty 

 stream called the Erive makes its appearance, at 

 first so small that a boy could jump across it easily. 

 As we pass along the uneven road, the stream 

 gathers strength from its numerous tributaries, all of 

 them after a rainy night seaming the sides of hills 

 like silver threads ; and anon it gains in violence and 

 volume and brawls over its rocky bed, which latter 

 widens as well as deepens as the stream descends to- 

 wards the sea. Here and there it throws its volume 

 of seething water over some rocky terrace as a water- 

 fall or cataract, and occasionally its restlessness seems 

 to be checked by some deep pool which the brown, 

 peaty-coloured water causes to appear of unfathom- 

 able depth. Everywhere, however, along the route 

 of the stream, even in these elevated regions, there was 

 growing such a wild luxuriance of that most magni- 

 ficent of all British and even exotic ferns— the Royal 

 Flowering fern (Osmunda regalis) — as we have- 

 never before seen, except perhaps once along the 



