~286 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



As the county is for the most part enveloped in drift or bog, 

 •only a few mineral veins have been found, although it is possible 

 more may exist, chalybeate springs being so numerous ; some of the 

 latter, however, are evidently due to the decomposition of the 

 pyrites in the Oalp. A lead mine was for a time worked at 

 Edenderry. 



Boate mentions that prior to 1640, Sergeant-Major Pigott 

 mined and smelted iron ore (limonite?) at "Dysert lands" in "the 

 King's County," and from his account the mining works must 

 have been extensive. At the same time Sir Adam Loftus, Yiscount 

 of Ely, had works near Mountmellick, but where he procured the 

 ore is not stated. 



The mearings of the King's and Queen's counties have been 

 changed at different times, and portions that were in the King's 

 County in Boate's time may now be in the Queen's : the place, 

 Dysert Land, has not been localized, and possibly it may be the 

 iron mines at Desert in the Queen's County (Sheets 13 and 18), 

 now the property of Lord Carew. 



Leitrim. 



Nearly the whole of Leitrim is occupied by Carboniferous rocks, 

 including a portion of the Connaught Coal-field. At Manor- 

 hamilton, coming in from the Co. Sligo, is a narrow exposure of 

 Metamorphic rocks, probably of Cambrian age, but possibly older. 

 At the south-east of the county is the marginal portion of a tract 

 of Ordovicians ; while a little exposure of similar rocks, surrounded 

 by Carboniferous Sandstone, appears to the south-east, close to the 

 Shannon. 



The coals and the working of iron in the Connaught Coal- 

 field is given in the description of the Co. Cavan, page 267. Be- 

 sides the clay-iron-stone of the Coal Measures and the bog- iron-ore 

 limonite was also mined and smelted in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries procured from the Ordovicians at Gortinee, 

 south-east of Drumsna near the Shannon. In late years, between 

 1860 and 1880, some ore was also raised here, and exported to 

 England. 



In the Metamorphic Cambrians (?) at Grortnaskeagh, Pollboy, 



