35 8 [Proc B.N.F.C., 



The sand dunes of Ballintoy, Portrush, and Portstewart had 

 furnished them with the most ancient forms of primitive man's 

 stone and flint implements and weapons. His habits, customs, 

 and almost his daily occupation were fully illustrated by the 

 varied and abundant antiquarian remains found in those 

 settlements, while the numerous stone monuments, circles, 

 cromlechs, and cairns that crest the hill tops and line the 

 mountain sides attested his long continued occupation. Primi- 

 tive man was, as he had said, an inquisitive and experienced 

 naturalist, who properly recognised every phenomena as the 

 result of some controlling cause, and what he was unable to 

 explain on natural grounds was attributed to supernatural 

 agencies. Being an inquisitive naturalist, they could well 

 imagine with what wonder he first traversed the strange 

 pavement of the Causeway, so artificial looking and yet so far 

 beyond the power of human skill, and they could readily 

 understand his natural conclusion that it was a " giant's " 

 causeway, for in this and similar difficulties the active agency of 

 giants was to primitive man as the active agency of " the 

 unknown God'' was to the Romans in their difficulty. He 

 called it the Giant's Causeway because of its shape and structure. 

 These causeways were formed of piles driven perpendicularly 

 into the mud of the lake bottom, and the circular ends of the 

 numerous piles formed the passage to the crannoge — a mode of 

 structure that had its parallel in the Giant's Causeway, which 

 is formed of vertical pillars, packed so close together that their 

 ends form a complete pavement or causeway, the difference 

 between the natural and the artificial being that whereas the 

 latter was formed of circular timber piles the natural was formed 

 of solid stone prisms in close contact. The origin of this 

 peculiar form and regularity could not be properly discussed 

 unless in relation to the great sheet of igneous rocks specially 

 characteristic of the North of Ireland. In dealing with that 

 they must remember that all rocks were divided into two very 

 distinct and well-marked groups — namely, the stratified and the 

 igneous. The stratified included all the fossiliferous and 



