36 THE IRISH ARAN. 
find many caverns excavated by the action of the water, but in 
Aran there are very few. In many places the lower part of the 
lofty cliffs has been excavated, leaving ledges, on which perch 
innumerable guillemots, mingled with a few puffins, razorbills, 
gulls, and choughs, the latter rare bird breeding here. The only 
place where there is anything in the nature of a cavern is in the 
south cliff of Ara Mor, where two tunnels have been formed about 
150 feet long, the roofs at the inner end of which have fallen in, 
leaving openings through which water is driven during gales, 
gaining for them the local names of puffing holes. 
Traces are still left here of one of the glacial epochs, when this 
part of the world was covered by an ice-sheet, and fine examples 
are to be found of erratic boulders or “ roches percés”’ of granite, 
brought from the Connemara district, and left by the retreating 
ice on the limestone. On the opposite shore, on the slopes of 
Errisbeg, near Roundstone, there are to be seen rocks planed by 
the action of the ice, and grooved by the stones carried beneath 
it, as the glacier ground them in its slow advance. Of course in 
Aran itself all such grooves and scratches have long been 
dissolved away by the effects of the abundant rainfall on a soluble 
rock. 
On some parts of the shore are found large accumulations of 
sand, which are drifted about by the winds, at one time fresh 
drifts being formed, covering gardens, etc., while at another old 
accumulations are carried away. 
Of course, situated as these islands are in the broad Atlantic, 
they feel the full force of the winds and waves, and often when 
the sea looks as smooth as a mill pond, the waters break on the 
cliffs with such force as to send up showers of spray fully roo feet 
in height. In stormy weather the effect is magnificent. I saw 
great balks of timber which had been thrown up on cliffs nearly 
200 feet high, and here so much seaweed had been thrown up, 
that men were collecting it for the purpose of burning into kelp: 
there was enough Laminaria or Tangle to repay their trouble. A 
place on the Middle Island was pointed out to me on which the 
body of a man had been thrown up on cliffs quite as high as those 
