Devon and Cornwall, Belgium, the Eifel, 8)C. 473 



mountains, to Brickeen island (beyond which to the east 

 everything must be imaginary), as is indicated in Mr. Grif- 

 fith's plan and sections ; nor does he clearly aver that he has 

 seen such himself, his idea of dislocation appearing mainly 

 to rest on a seeming unconformity arising from some dif- 

 ferences of strike*. The whole question, I think, is simply 

 solved by two considerations : 1st, by the inosculation of the 

 several strata, whether schistose, conglomerated, or calcare- 

 ous, in the line of their strike, while all dip conformably 

 south ; 2nd, that where the line of strike has been irregu- 

 larly broken through by superficial excavations on the exist- 

 ing dry land, as in Dunloe Gap, or by the intervention of 

 spaces occupied by water, as in the Lower Lake of Killarney, 

 and in Turk Lake, thus separating and removing from obser- 

 vation the direct continuity of strata, if we find some difference 

 of strike in the opposite dismembered masses, it is not ne- 

 cessary to imagine a fault in the case, and to represent the 

 distant strata as forming, when protracted, abutting angles 

 upon such a line of fault, since a simple flexure of the strata 

 upon the line of strike explains the whole matter at once. 

 And this is quite in accordance with the general observation 

 I have made on the older stratified rocks of the south of 

 Ireland, as possessing, when viewed on the large scale, an 

 east and west strike, yet subject to inflections from that line, 

 which are locally of greater or less extentf. The opposite 

 shores of Turk Lake, and those of the Lower Lake of Kil- 

 larney also, being thus brought into connexion by a simple 

 curvature of the strata, remove all difficulty, bearing in mind 

 that the constituent strata are not persistently continuous, but 

 interlock with each other; and the same may be affirmed 

 with respect to the relations in Dunloe Gap. 



But if the supposed fault were even real and not imaginary, 

 how vi'ould it prove that all the strata north of it belong to 

 one eera, and those to the south of it to another, while ana- 

 logous strata in the valley of Kenmare are in uninterrupted 

 connexion with each other, being there also included in and 

 interlocked one with the other, and not persistently continuous 



* Lond. and Edinb. Phil. Mag. for March 1840, pp. 163, 166, 171. 



-j- Geol. Trans,, vol. v., second series, Memoir on the South of Ireland, 

 ^ 7- — It is as if we were to draw a straight line to denote the general east 

 and west strike, and then upon this straight line to trace an undulated one 

 the successive curvatures of which rising above and falling below the straight 

 line, would express the local strikes. In such a view it is obvious, that if 

 the inflected line be divided into parts, and certain intervening portions be 

 removed, that the remaining separate parts may appear to have a different 

 strike relatively to each other, although in fact constituting portions of 

 the same series, as, for example, in the opposite shores of Turk Lake. 



