Kinahan — On Irish Arenaceous Bocks. 551 



there was a large trade in flax-crushers, they being sent on earts 

 into the other portions of Donegal and the neighbouring coun- 

 ties, or shipped from Donegal town to different places along the 

 coast-line. 



This trade seems to have been very short-lived. Formerly 

 flax was kiln-dried, the old disused kilns being scattered over the 

 county. In general, the inhabitants cannot tell you what they 

 were for ; a few, however, state that in their grandfather's time, 

 some sixty or seventy years ago, before the stone-erushers were 

 invented, all the flax was " beetled," that is, crushed by hand 

 with wooden beetles, and, before doing so, it had to be kiln-dried. 

 The kiln-drying ceased when the crushers came into fashion ; and 

 the trade in the latter appears to have died out some ten or fifteen 

 years ago, partly on account of the failure in the flax crops, 

 partly because mills were erected in which the flax was crushed, 

 and partly because, by some of the new modes of obtaining the 

 fibre, the flax does not require to be crushed, but is sold in the 

 unbroken state. The unsold flax-crushers are to be seen every- 

 where about the town of Donegal ; lying in heaps, as if some 

 giants had been playing a game of quoits. They are now put to 

 innumerable uses. 



The stones near Mount Charles have lately been greatly brought 

 into notice by the Drumkeelan stone being selected for the new 

 Museum and Library, Leinster House, Dublin. Wilkinson, in 

 1845, stated that the best stone is yellowish-grey, or pale cream- 

 colour, free, felspathic, slightly micaceous, with a silicious ferri- 

 ferous cement. Of it Mr. Cockburn states : — " It is good and 

 durable, but hard to work ; and has been used in the dressing, 

 Town Hall, Sligo ; also for quoins and dressing, with other sand- 

 stones, in the Killybegs Coast-Guard Station. The Provincial 

 Bank, Ballyshannon, was contracted to have been built with this 

 stone ; but, when half up, the supply of good materials seems to 

 have failed, the upper portion being stones from Dungiven, Co. 

 Londonderry" (see Dungiven, p. 583). 



Altito. Three miles from Donegal. — Dirty yellow. Varying 

 from granular to conglomeritic ; very quartzose ; semi- crystalline ; 

 hard; cement felsphatic. Formerly largely wrought into mill- 

 stones and flax-crushers; also heavy kerbing-stones. Used for 

 ashlars in Lough Eske Castle. 



