230 



HARD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OS SIP. 



are composed of fragments of rocks of almost eveiy 

 size of bigness and smallness, each fragment polished 

 and scratched by the ancient ice-sheet which long ago 

 disappeared. Low rounded bosses of rock, called 

 roches moutonnk, had been seen on each side of the 

 road all the way from Westport, many of the latter 

 covered with scorings and strice, all of them con- 

 verging in the direction of the valleys. There can 

 be little question that, before these bays or fiords were 

 filled with salt water, they had been filled with ice, 

 and had very probably been deepened by the mechani- 

 cal erosion of the moving ice-sheets towards those 

 deeper and lower parts now covered by the waters of 

 the Atlantic. 



Near Letterfrack we came upon some limestones 

 which had been altered by heat until they assumed 

 the appearance of loaf-sugar. Some of the lime- 

 stones have been coloured green, and the well-known 

 "green marbles" of Connemaraare obtained from this 

 deposit. Of them many exquisite ornaments are 

 manufactured and sold at Clifden, the deposit crop- 

 ping out along the hillsides. A grander country for 

 the geologist, and especially for the physical geologist, 

 could hardly be selected than this, for there are so 

 many varieties of rock formations, particularly of the 

 older and more primitive rocks, that at every few 

 hundred yards the student comes upon a new stratum 

 on which he feels forced to exercise his hammering 

 abilities. Perhaps none of them struck us more than 

 the outcrop of what had once been a Lower Silurian 

 conglomerate, that is to say, a shingle or gravel bed, 

 which had accumulated as such in one of the earliest 

 geological periods. The pebbles of this bed were 

 formed of various kinds of granite, and they had been 

 cemented together in a sandy and clayeykind of matrix, 

 until the entire stratum had become solid. Then this 

 bed had been exposed to the influence of heat and the 

 enormous pressure of overlying masses, so that both 

 the pebbles and the material in which they had been 

 imbedded had been metamorphosed together. No 

 more instructive illustration of the great changes 

 effected upon the configuration of the earth's surface 

 by the agency of heat could have been afforded. The 

 only drawback to the geologist whilst studying these 

 rocks is the absence of a donkey-cart and a good 

 strong donkey, for his knapsack soon gets full and his 

 pockets weighed down, and, worst of all, he is 

 obliged to leave specimens behind him that he would 

 otherwise gladly carry away to gloat over and study 

 during the winter months. 



We reached Cliefden late in the evening, when the 

 dusk was falling around us, and the neighbouring 

 hills were gradually shading off into immaterial 

 obscurity. We rose early next morning in order 

 to catch the eight o'clock mail-car for Galway. 

 Punctually to the moment, a lumbering old car, with 

 two Irish horses harnessed thereto, made its appear- 

 ance at the hotel door, an Irishman perched as 

 if lie were on the top of a chimney-pot in front of the 



machine. The first part of our way led us by the 

 side of the well-known and much-talked-of Twelve 

 Pins or Bens, both the word "Pin" and "Ben" 

 (which is common in Scotland) meaning head or peak 

 in the Celtic language. The names, in this instance, 

 have reference to a group of twelve tall mountains 

 which stand clustered together in the wildest part of 

 Connemara. The road to Galway winds in and out 

 of the valleys formed by and along the base of the 

 mountains, so that we had magnificent mountain 

 scenery on the left-hand side, whilst, on the right, 

 there extend, for miles, a series of lakes like "pearls 

 on a string. " Some of these lakes, as, for instance, 

 Lough Inagh and Glenda Lough, are of considerable 

 size, and have islands in their midst upon which are 

 the ruins of many an old castle or keep. At Ballyna- 

 hinch, in one of the largest of these islands, we 

 behold one of the finest of these castles, that of 

 the Martins, an Irish family which once possessed 

 almost regal power in this part of the country, and 

 owned no fewer than 200,000 acres of land. At 

 Recess there is a capital hotel, much frequented by 

 salmon and trout fishers, their prey being abundant 

 in the lakes and rivers of the neighbourhood. Here, 

 too, the scenery becomes more wooded ; but the drive 

 from Recess to a village called Oughterard is one of 

 the wildest and most dismal that it is possible to 

 imagine. We saw it under characteristic conditions. 

 There was a drizzling rain descending from the 

 mountain clouds all the way, and it seemed to bring 

 out the misery and the sloppiness and the bogginess 

 of the low grounds in all their intensity. 



As we approach Galway the country becomes more 

 cultivated. The roadsides and walls are perfect para- 

 dises of ferns, among which Scolopendrium vidgare, 

 Asplenium trichomanes, and Ceierach officinarum, 

 are most abundant. There are signs of greater 

 wealth, and here and there mansions make their 

 appearance with rich woods around them. Lake 

 Corrib stretches away to the very heart of the Twelve 

 Pins, some forty miles away, and a steamer plies 

 up and down the water during the summer months. 

 At Galway bridge we could see from the parapets 

 the salmon in scores, three or four thick, lying at the 

 bottom of the stream, waiting for the freshets, so that 

 they could pass up the salmon leap and through the 

 loughs into the mountain streams above. A day or 

 two may be agreeably spent in Galway, especially in 

 exploring that outlying suburb called the " Claddagh," 

 where the Spanish settlers of 300 years ago still live 

 apart from their Irish brethren, with a mayor of 

 their own, elected every seven years, and governed 

 by their own unwritten laws (which are obeyed 

 much more strictly than the written laws of the Saxon 

 in Galway town). 



We left Galway by the steamer which crosses the 

 bay to Ballyvaughan. The day was intensely hot, 

 and the atmosphere seemed full of light. Hence the 

 white limestone-terraced hills of the Burren would 



