TOP OF SLIEVE LEAGUE 61 



man of literature, who may most disparage the man 

 of science, may well affirm that here they meet on 

 common ground and have equal powers of reception 

 and enjoyment. Nor will he be gainsaid if he claims 

 that for the enjoyment of the distant view he is like- 

 wise quite as well equipped as the other. His eye, too, 

 can range over the whole glorious panorama of sea and 

 land, across the wide bay to the hills of Mayo, among 

 which the noble cone of Nephin rises like a distant 

 Vesuvius ; southward to the terraced heights of Sligo, 

 with their green tablelands and gleaming cliffs, which 

 look away to the western ocean ; eastward and north- 

 ward, over the billowy sea of hills that stretch through 

 Donegal round again westward to the Atlantic. What 

 is there of note in such ^a landscape, he may de- 

 mand, which he, ignorant of science, misses? What 

 added pleasure, what brighter light, can science cast 

 over it ? 



By way of reply to these queries, let me ask the 

 reader who has thus far accompanied me to turn from 

 the distant view to what lies beneath his feet on the 

 bare, stony, wind-swept summit of Slieve League. 

 Never shall I forget my own astonishment and enthu- 

 siasm when, in company with some of my colleagues 

 of the Geological Survey, I found the splintered slabs 

 of stone lying there to be full of stems of fossil trees, 

 belonging to kinds which occur abundantly in the sand- 

 stones below our Coal-measures. The geologist will 

 at once appreciate the full meaning of this discovery. 

 It showed that, perched on the summit of this moun- 

 tain, some two thousand feet above the sea, lay a cake, 

 only a few acres in extent, of that division of the 



