414 Reports and Proceedings — 



With regard to the mountainous districts surrounding the central 

 plain, we shall, I helieve, have the opportunity of visiting some parts 

 of the Wicklow Mountains, a district from which a portion, at all 

 events, of the native gold of Ireland was procured in ancient times, 

 as indeed it continues to be. Of the abundance of gold in this 

 country in early times, a glance at the magnificent collection of 

 ancient ornaments preserved in the museum of the Eoyal Irish 

 Academy will serve to give an idea. Even in times more recent 

 than those in which the bulk of these ornaments were made, gold 

 was an important product of this country, and I am tempted to quote 

 a few lines from an early English poem, " The Libell of Englishe 

 Policye," written in the year 1436. In treating of the commodities 

 of Ireland, the author says that the country is 



" So large, so gode, and so commodious 

 That to declare is straunge and merveilous. 

 For of silver and gold there is the ore 

 Among the wilde Irish, though they be pore ; 

 For they ar rude and can theron no skille 

 So that, if we hadde ther pese and good wille, 

 To mine and fine and metal for to pure 

 In wilde Irishe mighte we find the cure ; 

 As in Londone saith a jewellere 

 "Which broughte from thennes gold oor to us here, 

 "Wherof was fined metal gode and clone, 

 That at the touch no better coude be sene." 



Sir William Wilde has observed that the south-western half of 

 Ireland has yielded a greater amount of gold antiquities than the 

 north-western, and probably this would hold good with regard to the 

 production of the metal itself, though it has been found in the 

 counties of Antrim, Tyrone, and Derry, as well as in those of 

 Dublin, Wicklow, Wexford, and Kildare. 



The north-east of Ireland possesses, however, another geological 

 feature peculiar to itself in that great expanse of volcanic beds which 

 formed the subject of Professor Hull's address to this Section at the 

 Belfast Meeting. My only object in now mentioning them is again 

 to call attention to their containing the only remains of a Miocene flora 

 which are to be found in this island. Analogous beds were detected in 

 the corresponding basalts in the Island of Mull by the Duke of Argyll 

 in 1851. With the exception of the Hempstead beds of the Isle of 

 Wight, which should probably be classed as Oligocene, and the 

 Bovey Tracey beds of Devonshire, these are almost the only deposits 

 of Miocene age in the British Isles. The contrast presented by the 

 scarcity of deposits of this period in Britain with their abundance in 

 the north-west, centre, and south of France, Switzerland, and gene- 

 rally in the South of Europe, is striking. Instead of thick deposits 

 covering hundreds of sqtxare miles of country, like the Miocene beds 

 bordering the Pyrenees or those of the great system of the Auvergne, 

 we have small patches owing their preservation either to volcanic 

 outbursts having covered them up, or to some favourable circumstance 

 having preserved them from total denudation. Whether we are to 

 assume, with the late Professor Edward Forbes, that the general 

 dearth of these strata in the British Isles arose from the extent of 



