Kinahan — On Irish Metal Mining. 261 



Coal must have been worked at a very early time in Antrim, 1 

 but the English were the first to discover and work it elsewhere. 

 Between 1630 and 1640 coal was discovered by Christopher Wan- 

 desford at Idrone in the Co. Carlow, while rising iron-ore ; subse- 

 quently (1728) it was looked for and found in Coolbawn Hill, 

 Co. Kilkenny ; but it was not till later, when the woods began 

 to be exhausted, that elsewhere it was more generally looked for 

 and found. 



The geological sketches at the beginning of each county 

 description are necessarily very brief, and many important details 

 have had to be quite ignored. 



Antrim. 



The rocks of this county belong to the Cainozoic, Mesozoic, and 

 Palaeozoic Periods ; but the exact groups to which the first and last 

 belong have not been determined. The oldest rocks are metamor- 

 phosed, and may possibly be of Ordovician age, but probably are 

 Cambrian. Next to them are rocks belonging to the Calp group of 

 the Carboniferous, while the Mesozoic is represented by portions of 

 the Trias, Jurassic, and Cretaceous. The Cainozoic consists nearly 

 solely of sheets of Doloryte and their adjuncts, and in the latter 

 are plant remains, that, some say, indicate a Miocene, others, an 

 Eocene age. The mines worked have been principally for coal and 

 iron, while at the present time alum-clay [alumyte) is also a source 

 of industry. 



In the Eocene (?) are beds, or portion of beds, of coal [lignyte). 

 alumyte, litomarge [ferriferous clay), bole [aluminous limonite), and 

 iron-ore (limonite and magnetic) ; with steatyte, near the Gobbins 

 Island Magee. Yarious attempts have been made to work the 

 lignyte profitably, but all seem to have failed. In the alumyte 

 works (although in some of the mines there is a considerable thick- 

 ness of lignyte) it is considered perfectly valueless, and is run out 

 on to the attals [spoil, or waste heaps), or is used as filling stuff 

 in the old workings [stulls). 



The probable origin of the alumyte (alum-clay) has been given 

 in a Paper on the " Irish Crystalline Irish-ores," Scien. Proc. r 



1 The coal mines in Antrim seem to have been the oldest in England, Scotland, or 

 Ireland. — (See Co. Antrim, page 264.) 



