On Hy Brasil. 175 
record ; these every where yield remains of large forest trees that 
appear to have grown and decayed in the localities they are found 
in, and point to a time that cannot have been very remote when 
the land now sunken must have risen well above the water level. 
There is also the traditional story told in O’Flaherty’s “ Ogygia,” 
published in 1685. He says—“ Lough Lurgan is an inlet of the 
sea, between Tuam and West Connaught, at the mouth of Galway, 
stretching into the land, which was formerly dry land, until the 
Western Ocean broke over it. The remains of the barrier are the 
three Isles of Aran.” This traditional name of Lough Lurgan is 
still used for Galway Bay ; and margining the Bay itself below 
low water mark of spring tides there are numerous bogs with 
oak corkers im situ at their base, being in places over twelve feet 
deep. 
Nor is this the only evidence of recent subsidence, for in Mr. 
Kinahan’s “ Geology of Ireland ” he records the fact that the Rev.W. 
Kilbride, Vicar of Aran, has discovered at Tramore, on the largest 
of these islands, even human habitations and other structures that 
he has traced down below low water of spring tides. 
The legends of a buried Atlantis, larger than Lybia and Asia, 
described in Plato’s “' Timezeus,” of course, is one of the earliest re- 
cords of this land subsidence. So universal was this belief that 
the first discoverers of Brazil fancied they had discovered the 
long-lost continent, and named it accordingly after the vanished 
land. It is with the last traces of such a subsidence I wish to 
deal. What I venture to lay before the Geological Society in 
support of the idea that this little island off our western coast 
did really exist at no very distant period, is a map in which it is 
drawn in its proper alleged position, made about the year 1640; 
that this map is the heretofore unpublished and unknown work 
of a competent man, a Geographer Royal of France, and in his 
own handwriting; that it occurs in a volume distinguished by 
the accuracy of its delineations, and which, so far as I can dis- 
cover, is conspicuous for its freedom from errors, 
This last summer I saw the cliffs of the Isle of Wight; they were 
disappearing at a rate of upwards of a yard each year, under the 
comparatively quiet waves cf the ocean. Close to Bray, during last 
winter's storms, no inconsiderable portion of shore was removed ; 
and if, in addition to the strong breakers of the Atlantic, we con- 
