1886.1887.] 5^9 



plants, whilst the photographic members were not idle to 

 procure *' negatives " of the picturesque bits. Then, near the 

 northern end, where a larger talus of debris than usual offered 

 access to the top, the cliffs were ascended. Here a new field of 

 labour presented itself, and some of the members spread out in 

 search of two small ferns which grow sparsely on the mountain 

 top. Others directed their search after such moths and their 

 larvae as frequent upland heaths and bogs. One or two of the 

 more contemplative naturalists sat on the brow of these noble 

 cliffs and gazed seaward, and to them was open almost as much 

 opportunity of instruction as to the collectors of specimens. 

 There, at the foot of the cliffs, lay the broken masses of the 

 landslips and the scattered piles of fallen boulders, telling of the 

 subterraneous springs and alternations of frosts and rains that 

 in these climates play such a conspicuous part in modelling the 

 face of nature. The two or three caves in the face of the rock 

 tell of the wane of an age when the sea was six hundred feet 

 higher, or, more properly speaking, when the land was so much 

 lower, than at present, and the broad, flat, fertile plain which 

 lies between the foot of the cliff and the present sea-line tells 

 even more clearly the same tale, and marks a lengthened 

 pause in the oscillation between land and sea, when what 

 is known to northern geologists as the six hundred feet 

 terrace was being formed. If we choose we can glance back, 

 with the eye of the mind, an incalculably longer period still, 

 and conceive the scene before us as one of low banks of sea 

 sand, with broad salt lagoons behind them, in which, as the 

 land year by year slowly subsided, the brine gradually 

 precipitated itself, until rock salt to a thickness of one hundred 

 aud fifty feet has been the result, now being again restored to 

 daylight by the works of the Duncrue Salt mining Company. 

 Ages before the salt again there were estuaries in which sand 

 and mud, which were being deposited, became in due time carbon- 

 iferous sandstone and shale, and there may also have been the 

 vegetable products that would form coal ; but the vast coal 

 cellar that Dame Nature built at this time in Ireland, she, with 

 the caprice that is the prerogative of her sex, subsequently 



