SOUTH-WEST IRELAND. 177 



deep. In such places the sea does not form a plain 

 of denudation, but if given time enough, it may form 

 one of accumulation. Although the sea action may 

 have a tendency to plane down all land to its own 

 level, it cannot act so in all places, even if the 

 land is stationary or rising. If all the rocks and 

 different beds are homogeneous, it might so act ; but 

 on a coast like that of South-west Ireland it must 

 operate more quickly along soft strata, while the 

 harder rocks resist its efforts. The irregular outlines 

 of the coast seem to have been formed in this way ; 

 long narrow bays being excavated in the places that 

 were occupied by the softer rocks, while the hard 

 rocks form headlands, islands, and off-shore rocks 

 (carrigSj carrigeens, and skelligs). Subserialists 

 may state that such bays are submerged longitu- 

 dinal meteoric valleys ; to us, however, it seems that 

 most of the valleys of S. W. Ireland originated as bays, 

 which are now more or less completely emergent, 

 and that the marine action which we see to be at the 

 present day shaping the lower ends of those valleys, 

 is but the present continuation of that by which the 

 upper parts of the valleys were formed. 



The transverse valleys also may have been cut 

 by marine action. At the present moment, in the 

 south-west of Cork, the sea is excavating out the 

 fault-rock, and forming narrow guts and ravines 

 identical in shape with those that cross the inland 



