140 The Irish Naticralist. May, 1903. 



GEOLOGY. 



From the "Morning Post." 



In view of recent graphic descriptions of the ascent of Mont Pelee 

 the following extract from the Moniing Post, or Dublin Conrani, for 

 June 12, 1788, may be of interest, especially to northern geologists: — 



VOI,CANO AT KnOCKIvADE. 

 "In my last I gave a short account of the Volcano which discovered 

 itself here on the 30th of last month, and the devastation which ensued 

 in consequence. Fine as the year appears otherwise, we have had, in 

 this Kingdom, tremendous phoenomenas of fire and water. The moving 

 bog in the county of Tipperary did not, however, cause so much 

 mischief as the late irruption of fire in this neighbourhood. It forms 

 an awful but melancholy spectacle ; many fine fields are covered with 

 ashes, and a sort of cinder like the pumice stone; and the l^ava, in its 

 course to the sea, has destroyed four villages. Happily, indeed, the 

 bosom of the ocean put an end to its mischievous progress, but su^^h a 

 quantity of dead fish of all kind has been thrown on shore, that the 

 people are actually manuring their lands with them. 



" We have had some visitors here from the Hebrides, and numbers all 

 round the adjacent parts are coming in daily to view the volcano. I 

 yesterday ventured up Knocklade, in company with Mr. M'I,eod (whom 

 Johnson mentions with so much honour, when in the Island of Coll,) 

 Doctor Hamilton of Portrush, and some other gentlemen, and though a 

 great quantity of smoke was still issuing, we could distinctly perceive 

 that the crater formed by the irruption was not more than a hundred 

 yards in diameter; but we could not approach near enough to the 

 mouth, in order to look in, on account of the heat. I ventured my 

 walking-stick into some of the ashes, which in two minutes burned the 

 end of it. We put an &gg into another part, which in three minutes 

 exploded, and went off in powder. Our ground being too hot for us, we 

 descended, and found the leather of our shoes considerably scorched, 

 and reduced to powder." 



Dublin. R. IvI,OYD PrakGER. 



Bog-flows. 



To the Vierteljahrsschrift of the Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Zurich 

 (Jhg. xlii., 1897), Prof Jakob Fr'uh contributes a paper on bog-flows. It 

 is really an account of the Killarney outburst of 1896, as described by 

 Cole, Sollas, and Praeger, with notices of previous bog-flows taken 

 mainly from the reports of the same writers. 



