prevailing producting soil over all Antrim ; it is also used for 

 building, and entirely for the macadamising of our roads. The 

 Limestone is triturated into whiting, and burned, to add to the 

 farmers' manure and the builders' mortar. The Greensand being 

 rich in phosphate of lime, has often been a desideratum with 

 manufacturers of artificial manures. The Lias has been of little 

 value to any except the palaeontologist. The Keuper Marls of the 

 New Red Sandstone period form the main site of Belfast, and have 

 yielded the salt mines of Carrickfergus, while the Tertiary de- 

 posits constitute the brickfields about our neighbourhood. The 

 carboniferous rocks are, unfortunately, either absent, or else 

 impracticably below our reach ; they show at the north of the 

 County, and there are fruitful with coal and iron. 



Though we economise to the best advantage what rocks we 

 have, it must be confessed that Antrim has not the repute of a 

 mineral county. The valuable ores which have so materially 

 contributed to England's greatness are either absent or else out 

 of the miner's reach ; or, perhaps, the search for them has neither 

 been diligent nor well directed. The latter, I believe, and hope 

 to show, has been the real misfortune — a misfortune which ex- 

 tends not alone to Antrim, but to all Ireland. 



In 1855, the annual return of mineral products in Great 

 Britain and Ireland showed England yielding 7,000.000 tons of 

 iron ore ; Scotland, 2,400,000 ; and Ireland only 576, none of 

 which came from Antrim. Surely this return is very far from 

 indicating the relative proportions of the mineral wealth of the 

 three countries. 



All basaltic rocks contain some proportion of iron in their 

 essential composition, averging 9 or 10 per cent. ; sometimes 

 small veins or crystals of the magnetic oxide of iron occur — 

 (Specimens shown from the Isle of Muck). Ferruginous clays, 

 as yellow ochre, are not unfrequent in the glens and hills of 

 Antrim, as w r ell as chalybeate springs. These indications testify 

 to wide diffusiveness of iron throughout the Trap districts ; but 

 not until lately was it known to exist in such an accumulated 

 form as to invite extensive mining. 



When the railway to Ballymena was in course of construc- 

 tion, a bed of ochre and lithomarge was cut through near Bally - 

 pallady. This has been quarried and shipped to England by 



