I9I5- 



Coi.K. — TJic Geography of lrela7id. 



3 



investigation, since many of the main streams have a complex 

 origin, and their courses, Hke that of the Dee or the Severn 

 on the Welsh border, may have been greatly modified as 

 recently as Glacial times. J. B. Jiikes, in 1862, in his 

 memorable paper on " The River-valleys in the south of 

 Ireland," was the pioneer in enquiries as to river -capture. 

 The mere fall of a stream from point to point along its 

 course, when carefully worked out from maps, may suggest 

 relationships with the structure of the country ; while the 

 height of the barriers across which the stream appears to 

 have carved its way points in many cases to a very ancient 

 origin, when it rose on a land -surface now removed by 

 denudation. 



As subjects for county -description, we may suggest 

 Tyrone or Antrim — the former marked out so definitely as 

 the basin of the Mourne, with its drowned continuation in 

 the Foyle, and the latter so largely dependent on the 

 volcanic activity of Oligocene times. R. Lloyd Praeger, 

 in a unique railway handbook, has shown what a naturalist, 

 intimate with all aspects of the country, can do with the 

 hilly lands of Mourne ; and his " Flora of the West of 

 Ireland " possesses a distinctly geographic touch. But we 

 still need local studies, say, of the quartzite domes of 

 Connemara, or the sunken coast of western Mayo, or, a more 

 difficult and attractive matter, the successive peneplanes 

 in the county of Waterford. Up and down this varied 

 country, from the meanders and terraces of the local 

 streamlet to the glaciated mountain-sides or the cave-set 

 scarps of limestone, there are everywhere unworked fields 

 for the geographer. 



The Ordnance Survey Maps, contoured and hill -shaded, 

 chosen for the observer's particular homeland, form a 

 very pleasing basis. With due reference to the correspon- 

 ding sheet of the Geological Survey, an essay may be written 

 connecting the familiarly appreciated features with the 

 underlying geological structure. The sites of historic 

 buildings or prehistoric settlements may be found to have 

 been decided by some event which took place on the sea- 

 floor of Carboniferous or Silurian times. The glens cut 

 in stratified foothills, which play so large a part in the 



