144 *^^^ Irish Naturalist, [ June, 



swelling and diminishing as fresh portions of the bog gave 

 way, and slid downwards into the torrent. Every fresh out- 

 burst was accompanied by loud noises, likened by bystanders 

 to the booming of big guns or the rumbling of thunder. Over 

 the sides of the valley the settlement of the peaty part of the 

 fluid had already taken place, and, as drainage continued, it 

 increased somewhat in consistency. The disruption of masses 

 of bog continued at intervals down to Friday, January ist. 

 When we visited the scene on Saturda}^, January 2nd, the flow 

 had lost its torrential character, but a turbid stream, many 

 times increased beyond its usual volume, occupied the river 

 bed. Mr. James Barbour, who visited the place on Saturday, 

 January 8th, reports that one could then have stepped across 

 the stream, so that by this time it must have shrunk to nearly 

 its usual size. 



The district in which the bog is situated forms the southern 

 portion of a high and undulating area of Coal-measures, 

 generally bog-covered, and attaining a height of over 1200 

 feet, some miles to the north-west. That part of the bog in 

 which the outburst took place is about 750 feet above the sea ; 

 it forms the watershed, and drains eastwards into the river 

 Blackwater, and west into the Ownacree. To the north-east 

 the bog descends in a gentle slope towards the Tooreencahill 

 stream, a branch of the Blackwater ; to the north-west towards 

 the main branch of the Ownacree, and westward towards the 

 Carraundulkeen streamlet, into which it burst. Judging from 

 the size of the valley in which this branch flows, it would 

 appear that the greater part of the bog drained into the last- 

 mentioned stream. At the inquest evidence was given that a 

 '*wet vein" existed in the bog continuing the direction of 

 this stream. It is of interest to observe that the bog rests 

 partly on Coal-measures, and partly on Carboniferous lime- 

 stone, which is brought up by an anticlinal, and separated 

 from the Coal-measures by a fault, which runs for some miles 

 east and west, through the very middle of that part of the bog, 

 which lies adjacent to the outburst. 



The bog, like most others, possessed a convex surface ; it 

 extended in three arms, which sloped downwards in the three 

 directions of drainage already specified. In all other directions 

 it is bounded by gently [rising cultivated land. It was not 



